There were ‘two legends about this, both picturesque’ in circulation, and he hoped Trenchard might be able to settle the matter once and for all. One claimed that in 1917 the textile mills of Bradford had received an order to weave a million yards or so of light blue cloth for the Tsar of Russia’s cavalry. After the October Revolution, this was left on their hands. Thus, when the RAF officially came into being on 1 April 1918, there was a vast stock of surplus material going cheap that suited their requirements.
In the other version, the staff officer charged with choosing the colour was the beau of a musical comedy star named Lily Elsie, famous for starring in the London version of The Merry Widow. When samples were brought to him for a decision he decided to consult his girlfriend. ‘This is it,’ she is alleged to have replied, picking out the shade that the RAF has worn ever since, ‘because it matches the colour of my eyes.’ Trenchard was ‘most apologetic’ but could throw no light on the matter.
On the second subject – the origin of the RAF ensign – he was more helpful, saying ‘Yes, yes. I can tell you something about that.’ Trenchard recalled his staff coming to him with a sketch of the design. It featured the RAF red, white and blue roundel, originally devised to deter trigger-happy Tommies from blasting at friendly aircraft from their trenches, set on a sky-blue background. They warned him, however, that the Royal College of Heralds had ruled the roundels unacceptable as they were ‘not heraldry’. Trenchard resolved to take the matter up with the King. On his next meeting with him he brought the design along and explained the difficulty. ‘Well, Trenchard,’ said George V, ‘if it wasn’t heraldry before, it will be from now on.’ And he signed the drawing there and then.
Lily Elsie (Everett Collection Inc/Alamy Stock Photo)
The ensign anecdote sounds plausible enough. Trenchard was not the man to make up a tale about his sovereign. The truth of the origin of Air Force Blue remains obscure, though gossip certainly favoured the second version. John Slessor, who went on to be one of the outstanding figures of the wartime RAF, recalled being summoned one evening in October 1918 with other senior officers to a meeting in Salisbury to discuss sending reinforcements to France where the Germans were in full retreat. Before the main business began there was some light relief. Mark Kerr, a former senior naval officer who had switched to the Air Force, was to model the first uniform. As Kerr stepped forward into the light of a reading lamp in the new rig, the audience reacted with mirth and incredulity. ‘[It] was terrible,’ Slessor recalled, ‘a nasty pale blue with a lot of gold all over it, which brought irresistibly to mind the gentleman who stands outside the cinema.’2 He reported that ‘rumour had it that it was a joint design by Mark Kerr and Miss Lily Elsie, though I’m sure that this was a libel on a beautiful and talented lady who has far too good taste ever to have been party to such an atrocity. Fortunately, it was short lived …’
These foundation stories say much about how the RAF saw itself – and how it wanted others to see it – in the first years of its existence. Unpicking the Russian story – the yarn about the yarn – reveals some enduring components of the RAF image. One is an aura of romance. The Air Force was being linked to what was traditionally the most dashing arm of the military. The message was that aviators were the aerial equivalent of the cavalry, bold, colourful and brimming with elan, éclat and all the other French words that go with sabre-wielding men on horseback. But there is also a suggestion that they were the target of some resentment from their dowdier colleagues. The implication was that the authorities had decided that, rather than weave a new cloth for the new service, they would have to make do with a quartermaster’s windfall.
The second version reinforces the element of romance and introduces a raffish note. Lily Elsie was a big star of the day whose picture was plastered over mass-circulation illustrated papers. She was also married (as was Mark Kerr). Perhaps significantly, her playboy husband’s fortune came from a family business that made textile machines. Here the RAF is presented as the sort of outfit that has in its upper ranks officers who hang out with beautiful celebrities. The tale gives the impression of modernity and a devil-may-care attitude to traditional proprieties.
Without stretching things too far, the ensign anecdote also carries a subtext. In this submerged narrative, the infant service, whose values are illustrated in an attractive and innovative design, runs up against the dreary forces of tradition in the form of the heralds. But where there’s a will there’s a way and help is at hand from an unusual quarter. Young and brash the newcomers may be, but the King recognizes them for the loyal liegemen that they are. At a stroke the hindrance is removed. There will be plenty more obstacles across their path in the journey ahead, the tale implies, but they will be approached and dealt with in the same undaunted manner.
The RAF’s image developed naturally from the activities of the Royal Flying Corps in the First World War. The first task it was given was one that traditionally had been done by the cavalry – scouting the movements of the enemy. Once the front lines had solidified and trench warfare began, airmen mapped the battlefield, spotted for the artillery and clashed with enemy aviators trying to do the same thing.
At this stage they were a mere adjunct of the ground forces and did what the Army asked them to. But the nature of their activities meant they received a disproportionate amount of attention.
Aerial combat over the trenches seemed a clean, chivalrous business compared to the industrial carnage below. The isolated nature of much air fighting drew attention to individual warriors and the ‘ace’ was born. Both sides’ propaganda boosted their own airmen heroes. In Britain William Leefe-Robinson, Mick Mannock, Albert Ball and James McCudden, all VC winners, were household names. The last three died flying. Aerial combat was clearly a very dangerous business but outwardly at least the airmen displayed a cheerful fatalism: ‘Here’s a toast to the dead already’ ran a favourite song in the RFC’s well-lubricated messes, ‘three cheers for the next man to go.’
The airmen very quickly formed an identity that set them apart from soldiers and sailors. It was an attractive one, a blend of gallantry, individualism and insouciance in the face of death. The small-scale, tactical work they did was unsuited to the sort of regimented discipline that shaped the Army and Navy. They were old-fashioned warriors in modern fighting machines. These perceptions would persist long after this early ‘heroic’ age of air fighting was over.
Between 1917 and 1939 the Air Force would move from the periphery to the centre of British military thinking, planning and expenditure. The development was the result of two growth spurts, both of them brought about by fear of German air power. The Royal Air Force itself was conceived in the panicky atmosphere generated by continuing German air raids on Britain. Attacks by Zeppelins killed 500 civilians by the end of 1916 and diverted 17,000 servicemen from other duties. In the summer of 1917 long-range Gotha bombers struck London, killing and wounding nearly six hundred people in the initial raid. The fear felt on the streets spread upwards. ‘One would have thought the world was coming to an end,’ sniffed the Chief of the Imperial General Staff Sir William Robertson after attending an emergency cabinet meeting in July. ‘I could not get a word in edgeways.’3
Something had to be done. The War Cabinet appointed the South African soldier-statesman Jan Smuts to investigate. His first, short recommendations arrived quickly and focused solely on improving the air defences of the London area.
His follow-up report, delivered only a month later, went much further. From the flimsy evidence of the air raids, Smuts drew a vision of the future. He was now convinced that there was ‘absolutely no limit’ to the use to which aeroplanes could be put. ‘The day may not be far off,’ he predicted, ‘when aerial operations with their devastation of enemy