Airway To The East

Product Description

Airway to the East 1918-1920 has been written & compiled using photographs & a diary discovered by Clive Semple in his fathers attic after his death in 1971. Once he retired in 1996 he set to work researching the background to his fathers collection. The diary & two of the albums were the basis of Clives first book Diary of a Night Bomber Pilot in WW1 which was published in 2008. The third album & most importantly the scrap book provided the starting point for research into a sorry tale of RAF mismanagement which is revealed in this book. The Balfour Declaration in 1917 promised the Jews a homeland in Palestine. This contradicted a previous promise which Britain had made to the Arabs guaranteeing them independence if they helped drive the Turks out of Palestine & Syria. The Turks were duly driven out. When the Arabs discovered that they had been swindled they revolted & the British Army was unable to contain the unrest. It was decided to reinforce the Army with a fleet of bombers & fifty-one set off from England & France to fly to Cairo in the summer of 1919. Seventeen crashed or were otherwise destroyed en route & eight airmen were killed. The story got into the newspapers & Parliament demanded a Court of Enquiry. The evidence of mismanagement looked so bad that before the enquiry began Hugh Trenchard Chief of the Air Staff decided to hold it behind closed doors at the Air Ministry. The enquiries findings were suppressed by the Secretary of State for Air Winston Churchill & the newspapers never followed up the story. Fortunately the enquiry proceedings were filed away at the Air Ministry & it was a newspaper cutting which Clive found in his fathers scrap book dealing with the row in Parliament that led him to search through the Air Ministry files & uncover this account. Most histories of the RAF are written by retired senior RAF officers who have all avoided including this event in their written works.