On Thursday 23 April 2026 at 6pm, Dr Ross Mahoney will assess the challenges encountered in the production of The War in the Air, the official history of Britain's role in the air war of the First World War. This lecture will be hosted virtually via Crowdcast.

In 1922, the first volume of the official history of Britain’s role in the air war of the First World War, The War in the Air, was published. Sir Walter Raleigh, the Merton Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford, authored the first volume. After Raleigh died in 1922, the task of completing the official history was given to D.G. Hogarth, the Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. However, due to ill health, Hogarth resigned his position in early 1924 and died in 1927. After a drawn-out  process in selecting a successor, the task of writing The War in the Air fell to the former  Director of the Air Historical Branch, civil servant and First World War veteran, H.A. Jones, MC, in late 1924. 

The second volume of the official history was published in 1928, and all six volumes, along with an appendix, were completed by 1937. On completion in 1937, the joint  secretaries to the Committee for Imperial Defence’s Sub-Committee of the Control of  Official History, E.Y. Daniel and Cecil Longhurst, wrote to Jones thanking him for his work on The War in the Air, describing it as an ‘admirable achievement.’ 

The War in the Air covered the operations of the Royal Air Force, and its forebears, the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service, and its production reflected  many of the challenges that confronted the publication of official history in this period, namely purpose, influence, and control. This paper provides an archivally driven assessment of the challenges encountered in the production of The War in the Air, as  well as evaluating its place in the development of air power history as a field of historical enquiry.

Dr Ross Mahoney is an independent scholar specialising in the history of war and the editor-in-chief and owner of From Balloons to Drones. This online scholarly platform seeks to analyse air power history, theory, and contemporary operations in their broadest sense, including space and cyber power. Between 2013 and 2017, he was the inaugural Historian at the Royal Air Force Museum in the UK. Since relocating to  Australia, he has worked as a Historian for the Department of Veterans’ Affairs and as a Teaching Fellow at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at The Australian National University, based at the Australian War College. His primary research interest  focuses on the history of air power and air warfare. Other research interests include  military leadership and command, military culture, and the history and development of professional military education, all with reference to the experience of air forces. To date, he has published numerous chapters and peer-reviewed articles, edited two books, co-edited a special edition of an academic journal, and delivered papers on three continents to civilian and military audiences.

Virtual Lecture: An ‘admirable achievement’: The War in the Air, Creating the Narrative, and the Origins of a Discipline