Home Defence Force

Force, but only three additional squadrons instead of ten for the Far East, and with FAA requirements to be met by making Home and FAA squadrons interchangeable. The source of these ideas was almost certainly Trenchard, who was advising the Permanent Secretary of the Treasury, Fisher, at the time. A Cabinet sub-committee on the allocation of air forces in July 1934 agreed with the Admiralty that FAA squadrons had to be kept separate, but otherwise accepted Chamberlain s view that the RAF should be concentrated in the United Kingdom, recommending thirty-three additional squadrons for the Home Defence Force, four for the Far East, and four-and-a-half for the FAA. ... 

Nicolai datavised the fire command computer to retaliate. Electron and laser beams stabbed out. The hastily assembled home defence force fleet— basically every ship capable of launching a combat wasp—was vectored onto the intruders. By the time most of them had got under way the attackers had jumped away. 

CID minutes, 5 July 1922, CAB 2/3 Report of the Sub-Committee on Continental Air Menace , 26 Apr. 1922, CAB 3/3, TNA. See also John Ferris, The theory of a French air menace Anglo-French relations and the British Home Defence Air Force programmes of 1921-25 , Journal of Strategic Studies, 10 (1987), no. 1, 62-83. Barnett, CoUapse of British Power, pp. 270—2 Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery (London Allen Lane, 1976), pp. 276—7. 

During the DRC s discussions in January and February 1934, Fisher and Vansittart had unsuccessfully urged the CAS, Ellington, to ask for more than he did. The DRC report recommended ten additional squadrons to complete the Home Defence scheme of flfty-two squadrons of 1923 ten additional squadrons of aeroplanes and four of flying boats for service in the Far East and twenty additional squadrons for the Fleet Air Arm (FAA). The report stated that a further twenty-flve squadrons would be necessary to meet all eventual requirements , but it did not consider these to be part of the worst deflciencies to be remedied by 1939, although they should be reconsidered if Germany expanded her air force rapidly. " When the report was considered by ministers, Neville Chamberlain produced an alternative proposal for thirty-eight additional squadrons instead of ten for the Home Defence... 

Ferris, John, The theory of a French air menace Anglo-French relations and the British Home Defence Air Force programmes of XOll-iy, Journal of Strategic Studies, 10 (1987), no. 1, 62-83. 

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