at the Museum
- Neil Datson
- Apr 23
- 1 min read
General Smuts in 1918
On Tuesday 20 May I will be giving the lunchtime lecture at the RAF Museum, Colindale, in which I will be discussing the Smuts Report of 1917. The report is a flimsy document, but nevertheless might be described as the ‘intellectual underpinning’ of the Royal Air Force: its raison d’être.
Originally scheduled for June 2024 the lecture had to be cancelled at short notice by the museum. It wasn’t possible to reschedule it later in 2024 and my health prevented me from making any commitments earlier this year.
In the lecture I will be enlarging my commentary on the report in chapter 5 of The British Air Power Delusion 1906-1941, Disposing of a Surplus, which attempts to explain why Smuts imagined that Germany could be bombed out of the war in 1918-19. Rather than revisit that ground in detail on 20 May I will be aiming to answer two questions:
Firstly, why did General Smuts recycle the ideas about air power that were surfacing in the popular press?
And secondly, why was his report so welcome to Lloyd George that those ideas were immediately adopted by his government?
The lecture is free to attend in person at the museum or follow online but must be booked in advance. Anybody interested should follow the link below.
