Richard Kidston Law

Richard Kidston Law, 1st Baron Coleraine was a British Conservative politician. He was the youngest son of former Conservative Prime Minister Andrew Bonar Law and his wife Annie.

He was elected MP for Hull South West in the election of 1931 and held that seat until 1945. In 1940 he was appointed Financial Secretary to the War Office and was then transferred to the job of Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs until 1943. He was then Minister of State until 1945, when in Churchill's caretaker government he was Minister of Education. In November 1945 became the MP for Kensington South, which he held until February 1950.

In 1950 he published Return from Utopia, which stated his belief that trying to use the power of the state to create any sort of Utopia on earth is not just unattainable but positively evil because one of the first principles to be sacrificed is the principle of freedom and individual choice. In the book Law argued:

To turn our backs on Utopia, to see it for the sham and the delusion that it is, is the beginning of hope. It is to hold out once again the prospect of a society in which man is free to be good because he is free to choose. Freedom is the first condition of human virtue and Utopia is incompatible with freedom. Come back from Utopia and hope is born again.

Law was again elected as an MP in the election of 1951, this time for Haltemprice. Law resigned his seat in February 1954 in order to be elevated to the House of Lords as Baron Coleraine, of Haltemprice in the East Riding of the County of York.

In 1970 he published For Conservatives Only where he criticised the Conservative leadership for what he saw as sacrificing Tory principles for electoral expediency and the pursuit of the "middle ground". He was also Patron of the Selsdon Group of Conservative MPs.

Lord Coleraine married Mary Virginia, daughter of Abraham Fox Nellis, of Rochester, New York, in 1929. He died on 15 November 1980, age 79, and was succeeded in the barony by his son James Martin Bonar Law.

Arthur Vandenberg

Arthur Hendrick Vandenberg was a Republican Senator from the U.S. state of Michigan who participated in the creation of the United Nations.

Arthur Vandenberg was born to Aaron and Alpha Hendrick Vandenberg and raised in the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Vandenberg attended public schools there and studied law at the University of Michigan (1900-1901); while there he joined Delta Upsilon. He had no additional formal education. After a brief stint in New York working at Collier's magazine, he returned home in 1906 to marry his childhood sweetheart, Elizabeth Watson. They had three children. She died in 1917, and in 1918 Vandenberg married Hazel Whittaker; no children followed.

He was a newspaper reporter, editor and publisher for the Grand Rapids Herald from 1906 to 1928.

On March 31, 1928, he was appointed to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Senator Woodbridge Nathan Ferris: Governor Fred Green reluctantly did so following considerable political pressure, and Vandenberg immediately declared his intention to stand for election to both the short, unexpired term and the full six-year term. In November 1928, he was handily elected for a full term. In the Senate, he piloted into law a bill for automatic redistricting of the House of Representatives after each national census. He was at first an ardent supporter of President Herbert Hoover but he became discouraged by Hoover's intransigence and failures in dealing with the Great Depression. After the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932, Vandenberg went along with most of the early New Deal measures, except for the NIRA and AAA. With the exception of his amendment to the 1933 Glass-Steagal Banking Act, which created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Vandenberg failed to secure enactment of any significant legislative proposals. By the 1934 election, his own political position was precarious, and although he lost his home district he was reelected by 52,443 votes.

When the new Congress convened in 1935, there were only twenty-five Republican senators, and Vandenberg was one of the most effective opponents of the second New Deal. He voted against most Roosevelt-sponsored measures, notable exceptions being the Banking Act of 1935 and the Social Security Act. He pursued a policy of what he called fiscal responsibility, a balanced budget, states' rights, and reduced taxation. He felt that Roosevelt had usurped the powers of Congress, and he spoke of the dictatorship of Franklin Roosevelt. But at the 1936 Republican National Convention, Vandenberg refused to permit the party to nominate him for Vice President; he sensed the coming debacle and did not want to suffer a humiliating defeat.

As part of the conservative coalition of Republicans and Democrats in the Senate, Vandenberg helped defeat Roosevelt's attempt to pack the Supreme Court. Thereafter, Vandenberg worked closely with this group. He helped defeat such pork-barrel legislation as the Passamaquoddy Bay and Florida Canal projects, voted against the National Labor Relations Act, various New Deal tax measures, and the Hours and Wages Act.

Vandenberg had become a member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in 1929. A modified internationalist, he voted in favor of United States membership on the World Court; but the situation in Europe moved him towards isolationism. Also his experiences during the Nye Committee hearings on the munitions industry, of which he was the Senate cosponsor, convinced him that entry into World War I had been a disastrous error. He supported the isolationist Neutrality Acts of the 1930s but sponsored more severe bills which were designed to renounce all traditional neutral "rights" and restrict and prevent any action by the President that might cause the United States to be drawn into war. He was one of the most effective of the die-hard isolationists in the Senate. Except for advocating aid to Finland after the Soviet invasion of that country and urging a quid pro quo in the Far East to prevent a war with Japan over the Manchuria-China question, his position was consistently isolationist. In mid-1939 he introduced legislation nullifying the 1911 Treaty of Navigation and Commerce with Japan and urged that the administration negotiate a new treaty with Japan recognizing the status quo with regard to Japan's occupation of Chinese territory. Instead, Roosevelt and Secretary of State Cordell Hull used the resolution as a pretext for giving Japan the required six months' notice of intent to cancel the treaty, thus beginning the policy of putting pressure on Japan that led to the Attack on Pearl Harbor.

During World War II, Vandenberg's position on American foreign policy changed radically. Although he continued to vote with the conservative coalition against Roosevelt's domestic proposals, Vandenberg gradually abandoned his isolationism to become an architect of a bipartisan foreign policy, which he defined as a consensus developed by consultation between the President, the State Department, and congressional leaders from both parties, especially those in the Senate. On January 10, 1945, he delivered a celebrated "speech heard round the world" in the Senate Chamber, publicly announcing his conversion from "isolationism" to "internationalism." In 1947, at the start of the Cold War, Vandenberg became chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In that position, he cooperated with the Truman administration in forging bipartisan support for the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, and NATO, including presenting the critical Vandenberg resolution.

In 1940 and 1948 Vandenberg was a "favorite son" candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, but he was defeated both times by Republicans from New York. In 1950 Vandenberg announced that he had developed cancer. He died on April 18, 1951.

Thurman Arnold

Thurman Wesley Arnold was an iconoclastic Washington, D.C. lawyer. He was best known for his trust-busting campaign as Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division in Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Department of Justice from 1938 to 1943. Before coming to Washington in 1938, Arnold was the mayor of Laramie, Wyoming, and then a professor at Yale Law School, where he took part in the legal realism movement, and published two books: The Symbols of Government (1935) and The Folklore of Capitalism (1937). A few years later, he published The Bottlenecks of Business (1940).

Thurman was born in the frontier ranch town of Laramie, Wyoming, which grew to be a small city and location of the University of Wyoming. He began his university studies at Wabash College, but transferred to and graduated from Princeton. He earned his law degree from Harvard Law School in 1914. He served in World War I, and worked briefly in Chicago before returning to Laramie, where he was mayor from 1923-1924. He developed a reputation as a maverick lawyer.

As chief competition lawyer for the United States government, Arnold launched numerous studies to support the antitrust efforts in the late 1930s. He targeted the American Medical Association in their anti-competitive efforts against health plans. The Roosevelt administration later de-emphasized antitrust enforcements, for the stated purpose of allowing corporations to concentrate on contributing to victory in World War II.

In 1943, Arnold was appointed as a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, succeeding Wiley B. Rutledge, who had been promoted to the U.S. Supreme Court. He was "kicked upstairs" by FDR to the Court of Appeals in order to get him out of the Antitrust division. Although it had some responsibility for review of decisions by federal administrative agencies, during Arnold's tenure the court's primary role was reviewing decisions of local trial courts involving routine civil and criminal matters arising in Washington, D.C.. Arnold was never happy during his two years on the court, resigning after only two years on the bench. As an explanation of his decision, he told observers he "would rather be speaking to damn fools than listening to damn fools." He returned to private practice where, along with Paul A. Porter and Abe Fortas, he co-founded the law firm known today as Arnold & Porter. He died on November 7, 1969.

Air Marshal Charles Portal

Marshal of the Royal Air Force Charles Frederick Algernon Portal, 1st Viscount Portal of Hungerford was a senior Royal Air Force officer and an advocate of strategic bombing. He was the British Chief of the Air Staff during most of the Second World War.

Charles Portal was born 21 May 1893 in Hungerford, England, the son of Edward Robert Portal and his wife Ellinor Kate (née Hill). The Portals had Huguenot origins, having arrived in England in the 17th century. Charles Portal, or "Peter" as he was nicknamed, was educated at Winchester College and Christ Church, Oxford, although he did not finish his degree as he left undergraduate life to enlist as a private soldier in 1914.

At the beginning of World War I, Portal joined the British Army and served as a dispatch rider in the motorcycle section of the Royal Engineers on the Western Front. Commended in Sir John French's first despatch of September 1914, in December 1914 Portal was given command of all riders in the 1st Corps Headquarters Signals Company.

In 1915 Portal transferred to the Royal Flying Corps, serving first as an observer and eventually a flying officer. He reached the rank of lieutenant-colonel and earned the Military Cross. In April 1918 he became an officer in the new Royal Air Force, following the Royal Flying Corps' merger with the Royal Naval Air Service.

After the war, he took over No. 7 Squadron RAF and concentrated on improving bombing accuracy. In 1934 he was appointed commander of British forces in Aden, where he tried to control the local tribesmen by air power. In January 1935 he was promoted to air commodore and in July 1937 to air vice marshal, when he was appointed Director of Organization in the Air Ministry.[2] Just prior to outbreak of the Second World War, he was ordered to establish 30 new air bases in Britain.

In early 1939 Portal was appointed Air Member for Personnel on the Air Council.[3] At the outbreak of the war in September he was made acting air marshal and in April 1940 commander-in-chief of Bomber Command.

Portal advocated strategic area bombing against German industrial areas instead of bombing of specific factories or plants. He gave the first order to bomb Berlin on 25 August 1940. The result was that Hermann Göring ordered the Luftwaffe to bomb London instead of British airfields. The Blitz had begun. Prime Minister Winston Churchill was impressed with Portal's strategy and Portal was knighted in July 1940.

In October 1940, Portal was appointed as Chief of the Air Staff with the rank of air chief marshal and became involved with the controversy over the Big Wing that resulted in Hugh Dowding's removal as the head of Fighter Command. He concentrated on improving bomber navigation systems and bombing aids and increasing the power of the bombs themselves.

In August 1941 he received a report of the relative inefficiency of RAF daytime raids and proposed area bombing by night. To implement his directive he replaced the chief of bomber command, Air Chief Marshal Richard Peirse, with Arthur Harris.

Portal accompanied Churchill to all the conferences and made a good impression on Americans. In January 1943, at the Casablanca Conference, the Combined Chiefs of Staff selected him to coordinate the bomber forces of both the United States and Britain in a combined bomber offensive over Germany. The forces were transferred to U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower for the duration of Operation Overlord; but when their control reverted to the Combined Chiefs, Portal still advocated area bombing of German cities instead of specific targets.

In June 1944 Portal was promoted to marshal of the Royal Air Force and in February 1945 he was one of the senior commanders present at the Yalta Conference. In early 1944 Portal's view of strategic bombing changed; he felt that bombers should play a more auxiliary role in Allied offensive. In this he disagreed with Sir Arthur Harris, an advocate of heavy strategic bombing, who forced Portal to back down. In March 1945 Churchill gave the final order to stop area bombing, after the firestorm of Dresden a few weeks earlier. Churchill subsequently distanced himself from the bombing writing that "the destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of Allied Bombing".

In 1945, after the war's end, Portal retired from the RAF and in August was created Baron Portal of Hungerford, of Hungerford in the County of Berks, and a year later Viscount Portal of Hungerford, with the same territorial designation. From 1946 to 1951 he was Controller of Production (Atomic Energy) at the Ministry of Supply.

He was elected Chairman of British Aluminium and in 1958/9 he fought in the City of London's "Aluminium War" against a hostile takeover bid by Sir Ivan Stedeford, Chairman & CEO of Tube Investments. T.I. along with its ally Reynolds Metals of the US, won the takeover battle, and in the process, rewrote the way the City of London conducted its business in relation to shareholders and investors. Stedeford replaced Portal as Chairman of British Aluminium.

In 1960 Portal was elected chairman of the British Aircraft Corporation.

Lord Portal of Hungerford died on 22 April 1971, aged 77. His Viscountcy became extinct, but his Barony, which had been created with a special remainder, passed to his daughter Rosemary.

Sir David Low

Sir David Alexander Cecil Low was a New Zealand political cartoonist who lived and worked in the United Kingdom for many years. Low was a self-taught cartoonist. Born in New Zealand, he worked in his native country before migrating to Sydney, Australia in 1911, and ultimately to London (1919), where he made his career and earned fame for his Colonel Blimp depictions and his merciless satirizing of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini and their policies. Such stinging depictions led to his work being banned in Italy and Germany.

Low received a knighthood in 1962, and died in London in 1963. Upon his death in 1963, Low was described in the press as "the dominant cartoonist of the western world".

Low was born in Dunedin, and attended primary school there. His family later moved to Christchurch, where Low attended Christchurch Boys' High School. Low's first cartoon was published in 1902, when he was 11 years old, in the Christchurch Spectator.

Low began his career as a professional cartoonist with the Canterbury Times in 1910. In 1911 he moved to Sydney, Australia to join the Bulletin. During his employment at the Bulletin, Low became famous for a 1916 cartoon of William Hughes, then the Prime Minister of Australia, entitled The Imperial Conference. A collection of Low's cartoons of Hughes entitled The Billy Book, which he published in 1918, brought Low to the notice of Henry Cadbury, part-owner of the London Star. In 1919 Cadbury offered Low a job with the Star, which Low promptly accepted.

In England, Low worked initially at the London Star (1919–27), which sympathized with his own moderately left-wing views. He then accepted an invitation from Max Aitken to join the conservative Evening Standard (1927–50) on the strict understanding that there would be no editorial interference with his output. Later he moved to the Daily Herald (1950–53), and finally the Manchester Guardian (from 1953).

In 1937, Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels told British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax that British political cartoons, particularly those of Low's, were damaging Anglo-German relations. In 1937 Low had produced an occasional strip about "Hit and Muss" (Hitler and Mussolini), but after Germany made official complaints he substituted a composite dictator, "Muzzler". After the war, Low is said to have found his name in the The Black Book, the list of those the Nazis planned to kill in the aftermath of an invasion of Great Britain.

Generations of New Zealand school students were, and are still being, taught the origins of the Second World War in textbooks illustrated with Low's cartoons and were told that Hitler had a personal hatred of the cartoonist. His works are also featured in many British history textbooks.

One of Low's most famous cartoons, Rendezvous, was first published in the Evening Standard on the 20th of September, 1939. It satirizes the cynicism which lay at the heart of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, depicting Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin bowing politely before each other after their joint invasion of Poland, but nevertheless greeting each other respectively as "the scum of the earth" and "the bloody assassin of the workers".

In 1998, a PhD by Timothy S. Benson was published examining the relationship between David Low and his proprietor at the Evening Standard, Lord Beaverbrook. Benson found that Low's complete autonomy on the paper was not all it was cracked up to be.

Coke Robert Stevenson

Coke Robert Stevenson was Governor of Texas from 1941 to 1947. He was the only 20th century Texas politician to serve as Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives, as Lieutenant Governor, and then as governor.

He was born near the geographic center of Texas in Mason County to Robert Milton and Virginia Hurley Stevenson. His parents named him, not for Governor Richard Coke, but after Methodist bishop Thomas Coke. As a teenager, he went into the business of hauling freight. In 1913, Coke Stevenson became president of the First National Bank in Junction, the seat of Kimble County. He was Kimble County Attorney from 1914-1918, and Kimble County Judge, the chief county administrator with some judicial duties, from 1919-1921. In 1928 he was elected to the Texas House as a Democrat, and served there from 1929 until 1939, when he became lieutenant governor.

Stevenson succeeded to the governorship on August 4, 1941, when Governor W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel resigned to take a seat in the U.S. Senate, which he won in a special election. A dramatic contrast to the flamboyant and unpredictable O'Daniel, Stevenson's approach was so conservative and taciturn that his critics accused him of doing nothing. Stevenson was elected to a full term in 1942, winning the Democratic primary with 69% and being unopposed in the general election. He was elected to a second term in 1944, effectively unopposed. When he left the governorship in January 1947 he was the longest-serving governor in the history of Texas and had presided over a broad and deep economic recovery during the years of World War II.

In 1948, he ran for the U.S. Senate. He led the Democratic primary with 39.7% to 33.7% against U.S. Representative Lyndon B. Johnson of Austin. In the hotly-contested runoff, Johnson won by only 87 votes out of 988,295 cast - one of the closest results in a Senatorial election in U.S. history. (As there was no effective Republican Party in Texas, winning the Democratic primary was all that mattered.) Stevenson challenged the result, and was granted an injunction by the Federal District Court, barring Johnson from the general election ballot. However, Supreme Court Justice Hugo L. Black, sitting as a Circuit Court judge, ruled that the Federal government lacked jurisdiction, and that the question was for the Democratic State Central Committee to decide. He ordered the injunction stayed, and his ruling was upheld by the Supreme Court. The Central Committee sustained Johnson's victory by a 29-28 vote. The tie-breaking vote was cast by publisher Frank W. Mayborn of Temple, who rushed back to Texas from a business trip in Nashville, Tennessee, at the urging of Johnson's campaign manager, John B. Connally.

After the loss to Johnson, Stevenson retired to Junction. Disenchanted with the Democratic Party, he supported Republicans for the rest of his life, including Richard M. Nixon and Barry Goldwater. He died in San Angelo on June 28, 1975.

Lincoln MacVeagh

Lincoln MacVeagh was a distinguished United States soldier, diplomat, businessman, and archaeologist. He served a long career as the United States ambassador to several countries during difficult times.

Lincoln MacVeagh was born October 1, 1890, in Narragansett Pier, Rhode Island, the son of Charles MacVeagh and Fanny Davenport Rogers MacVeagh. MacVeagh graduated from Groton School in 1909 and Harvard magna cum laude in 1913. He studied languages at the Sorbonne in 1913–14. He was fluent in German, French, Spanish, Latin, and Classical Greek.

On August 17, 1917 MacVeagh married Margaret Charlton Lewis, the daughter of a distinguished linguist. She also was a serious student of classical languages. Their daughter, Margaret Ewen MacVeagh, accompanied her parents on various tours of duty around the world. Mrs. MacVeagh died on September 9, 1947.

MacVeagh served in the U.S. Army during the Great War, attaining the rank of Major. He was a member of the American Expeditionary Force in Europe. He served in the Artois, St. Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne campaigns and was cited by General of the Armies John J. Pershing in 1919 for “exceptionally meritorious services.” After World War I, he became a director of Henry Holt & Company, a publishing firm in Baltimore, Maryland. In 1923 he left Henry Holt to found the Dial Press.

In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed MacVeagh to be the Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Greece. Following his presentation of his credentials he gave a speech in classical Greek. He remained at the post in Athens until June 5, 1941, several months after the German Army overran Greece.

In 1940, at the beginning of World War II, British troops had invaded and occupied Iceland in fear that Germany would take the island first. In July 1941, the governments of Iceland and the US had agreed that the defense of Iceland would be the responsibility of the United States. On August 8, 1941 President Roosevelt appointed MacVeagh as the first U.S. ambassador to Iceland to manage the sensitive relations between the U.S. and Iceland. He remained in Reykjavík until June 27, 1942.

President Roosevelt appointed him to another ambassadorship, this time as the Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Union of South Africa. He served in Pretoria from May 21, 1942 until November 21, 1943, successfully coordinating the American wartime agencies there.

On November 12, 1943, President Roosevelt again called on MacVeagh’s experience in sensitive foreign relations. The President sent him to Cairo to as the ambassador to the governments-in-exile of Greece and Yugoslavia who had fled their countries. After the liberation of Greece, MacVeagh transferred the embassy back to Athens on October 27, 1944. The office of the Embassy at Cairo was closed, November 8, 1944.

In 1947, he gave secret testimony to the Congress on the danger of Soviet-supported extreme leftist movements in the Balkans. This testimony was considered an important factor in formulating what became known as the Truman Doctrine, which stated that the U.S. would support Greece and Turkey with economic and military aid to prevent their falling into the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence. MacVeagh pressed the post-war Greek Government to pursue a democratic policy.

While he was in Greece, MacVeagh conducted excavations beneath the Acropolis and made archeological contributions to the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. With his first wife Margaret, he wrote Greek Journey, a book for children. His wife died while they were in Athens. He left Athens on October 11, 1947.

President Truman named MacVeagh as ambassador to Portugal on April 8, 1948. While in Lisbon he was instrumental in bringing Portugal into NATO. He remained at the post in Lisbon until February 26, 1952.

In 1952, President Truman once again called upon MacVeagh to serve as ambassador to Spain. He served for a year in Madrid.


He retired in 1953 as envoy in Madrid after having conducted successful negotiations for military and economic agreements between the United States and Spain.

In May 1955, MacVeagh remarried Mrs. Virginia Ferrante Coats, daughter of Marchese and Marchesa Ferrante di Ruffano of Naples, Italy.

MacVeagh died on January 15, 1972, at a nursing home in Adelphi, Maryland at the age of 81. He was survived by his wife and daughter, Margaret (Mrs. Samuel E. Torne) of Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was interred at the Church of the Redeemer Cemetery in Lower Merion Township near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

George Addes

George F. Addes was a founder of the United Automobile Workers union and its secretary-treasurer from 1936 until 1947.

Addes and Richard Frankensteen led a major faction of the Union, supporting piecework and incentive pay in auto plants. The other faction, led by Walter Reuther, accused them both of being communists. Addes died in 1990 and was of Lebanese ancestry.

Vannevar Bush

Vannevar Bush was an American engineer and science administrator known for his work on analog computing, his political role in the development of the atomic bomb, and the idea of the memex, which was seen decades later as a pioneering concept for the World Wide Web.

Bush was a prominent policymaker and public intellectual ("the patron saint of American science") during World War II and the ensuing Cold War, and was in effect the first presidential science advisor. Through his public career, Bush was a proponent of democratic technocracy and of the centrality of technological innovation and entrepreneurship for both economic and geopolitical security. He died on June 28, 1974.

Maurice Webb

Maurice Webb was a British Labour politician.

Webb joined the Labour Party in 1922 as a teenager and was a well-known political journalist, including for the Daily Herald. From 1929 to 1935 he worked as the Party's propaganda officer. He was also a broadcast commentator and a member of the executive of the National Union of Journalists.

Webb was elected Member of Parliament for Bradford Central in the 1945 general election. He served as the Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party from 1946 to 1950. In 1949 he intervened to delay Brian Close's National Service so the 18-year-old Close could complete the cricket season playing for Yorkshire County Cricket Club. In 1950, he was appointed as Minister of Food, a key job in a time of rationing, and was appointed as a Privy Counsellor. He died on June 10, 1956.

Air Marshal Arthur W. Tedder

Marshal of the Royal Air Force Arthur William Tedder, 1st Baron Tedder of Glenguin, was a senior officer in the Royal Air Force and a significant British commander during the Second World War.

Arthur Tedder was born in Scotland at the Glenguin Distillery (now Glengoyne) north of Glasgow in 1890. He was the son of Sir Arthur John Tedder and Emily Charlotte Bryson. His father was distinguished as the Commissioner of the Board of Customs who devised the old age pension scheme. He was educated at Whitgift School and Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he read history.

While at University, Tedder had gained a reserve commission in the Dorsetshire Regiment in 1913. He joined the Colonial Service and served in the administration in Fiji, but returned to Britain to rejoin his regiment.

In 1916 he suffered a knee injury which made him unfit for further infantry service. As a result, he transferred to the Royal Flying Corps in 1916, serving in France from 1915 to 1917 where he served first with No. 25 Squadron RFC, then as commander of No. 70 Squadron RFC (1 Jan 1917) and then transferred to the Middle East as commander of No. 67 Squadron RFC/RAF (25 Jun 1917)) and then in Egypt from 1918 to 1919 as commander of the School of Navigation and Bomb Dropping and of 38th Wing (from 24 Jun 1918).

After the War, Tedder accepted a permanent commission in the new Royal Air Force (RAF) as a squadron leader and commanded Nos 207 and 274 Squadrons, both based at RAF Bircham Newton. No 207 Sqn (equipped with DH9a bombers) was briefly deployed to Turkey in 1922/3 during the Chanak Crisis. No 274 Sqn was equipped with the Handley Page V/1500, the largest RAF bomber of its time. From 1923, Tedder was involved in training, both as a pupil at the RN Staff College and the Imperial Defence College and on the staff at the Directorate of Training, the RAF Staff College and the Air Armament School (as officer commanding in 1932). By 1931 Tedder had reached the rank of group captain and from 1934 to 1936 he served as Director of Training.

In 1936, he was appointed Air Officer Commanding (AOC) RAF Far Eastern Forces and in 1938 he became director general for research in the Air Ministry.

At the outbreak of war in 1939, Tedder's department was transferred to the newly created Ministry of Aircraft Production, but Tedder was unable to form a good working relationship with the minister, Lord Beaverbrook, and consequently with Prime Minister Churchill and in November 1940, he became Deputy Air Officer Commander in Chief, RAF Middle East Command.

Tedder was appointed as Air Officer Commander in Chief, RAF Middle East Command in June 1941, with the temporary rank of Air Marshal (made permanent in April 1942). He had not been Churchill's first choice for the role but when the preferred choice (Air Vice-Marshal O T Boyd) was captured, Tedder was appointed. As head of the RAF Middle East Command, he commanded Allied air operations in the Mediterranean and North Africa, covering the evacuation of Crete in May 1941 and Operation Crusader in north Africa. After experiencing victories and defeats supporting troops fighting General Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps, Tedder's air forces were key to the Allied victory at the Battle of El Alamein. One of his bombing tactics became known as the "Tedder Carpet".

In December 1943, by now a temporary Air Chief Marshal, Tedder took command of Allied Air Forces in the Mediterranean. He was involved in the planning of the Allied invasion of Sicily.

Arthur Tedder (centre) at the ceremony of the German unconditional surrender (May 1945). Standing is Soviet Marshal Zhukov reading the act of the surrender.When Operation Overlord - the invasion of France – came to be planned, Tedder was appointed Deputy Supreme Commander beneath U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Finding himself with little responsibility in this new role he wrested control of the air planning for D-Day from the commander of the Allied Air Expeditionary Force, Trafford Leigh-Mallory. He developed an antipathy towards the British General Bernard Montgomery and during the difficult Battle of Normandy and later, he was a critic of Montgomery's performance and advocated Montgomery's removal from command.

In the last year of the war Tedder was sent to Russia to seek assistance as the Western Front came under pressure during the Battle of the Bulge. When the unconditional surrender of the Germans came in May 1945 Tedder signed on behalf of General Eisenhower.

Knighted in 1942, Tedder was granted a peerage at the war's end. He followed Charles Portal as Chief of the Air Staff and served in that post from 1946 to 1950. In 1947 he delivered the Lees Knowles Lecture, which was then published as Air Power in War.

Although the nature of his war service denied him gallantry awards, he received several significant foreign awards from Belgium, France, the United States and elsewhere.

Tedder was the author of a historical study of the Royal Navy and also composed his war memoirs. In 1950 he became Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. In 1950 he served as the British representative on the military committee of NATO in Washington DC. He also served as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Governors of the BBC. He received at least six honorary LLD degrees, and was avidly interested in astronomy. In his later years he contracted Parkinson's Disease and died in Surrey in 1967, aged 76 years.

He married Rosalinde Maclardy who was killed in a plane crash in Egypt in 1943, an event that Tedder witnessed. Tedder remarried but his second wife predeceased him by about two years, in 1965. Tedder was the parent of: Dick (killed in France 1940), John Michael (1926-1994; Late Purdie Professor of Chemistry, University of St. Andrews), and a daughter Mina. His stepson Alasdair was also killed.

Lieutenant General Carl Spaatz, USAF

Carl Andrew "Tooey" Spaatz was an American general in World War II, and the first Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force.

Spaatz was born "Carl Andrew Spatz" on June 28, 1891, in Boyertown, Pennsylvania. Spaatz added the second "a" in 1937 at the request of his wife and daughters to clarify the pronunciation of the name, as many pronounced it "spats". He added the second "a" to draw it out to sound like "ah", like the "a" in "father".

He attended West Point, where he received his nickname because of his resemblance to another red headed cadet named F.J. Toohey, and graduated in 1914. He served briefly in the infantry but was assigned to the Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps in October 1915.

Spaatz served in the First Aero Squadron which was attached to General John J. Pershing during his expedition to Mexico in 1916. Spaatz was promoted to First Lieutenant in July 1916 and to Captain in May 1917.

Following America's entry into World War I, Spaatz was sent with the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in command of the 31st Aero Squadron. Spaatz spent most of the war commanding the American Aviation School at Issoudun, France but he saw three weeks of action during the final months of the war. In this brief period, Spaatz shot down three enemy planes and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross (DSC); during the time he was with the 13th Aero Squadron. Spaatz was given a temporary promotion to major in th Air Service in June 1918.

In 1919 he served in California and Texas and became assistant department air service officer for the Western Department in July 1919. He reverted to his permanent rank of captain February 27, 1920, but was promoted to major July 1, 1920.

As a major, he commanded Kelly Field, Texas, from October 5, 1920, to February 1921, served at Fort Sam Houston as air officer of the Eighth Corps Area until November 1921, and was commanding officer of the 1st Pursuit Group, first at Ellington Field, Texas, and later at Selfridge Field, Michigan, until September 24, 1924. He graduated from the Air Corps Tactical School, Langley Field, Virginia, in June 1925, and then served in the Office of the Chief of Air Corps at Washington, D.C.

From January 1 to January 7, 1929, Spaatz along with fellow Air Corps officers, Captain Ira Eaker and Lieutenant Elwood Quesada, both of whom would later become senior United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) generals, established an aviation record by keeping the airplane Question Mark in the air over the Los Angeles vicinity for over 150 hours.

From May 8, 1929, to October 29, 1931, General Spaatz commanded the 7th Bombardment Group at Rockwell Field, California, and the 1st Bombardment Wing at March Field, California, until June 10, 1933. He then served in the Office of the Chief of Air Corps and became chief of the Training and Operations Division. In August 1935, he enrolled in the Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and while there was promoted to lieutenant colonel. He graduated in June 1936, and then served at Langley Field on the staff of Maj. Gen. Frank M. Andrews, commander of General Headquarters Air Force, until January 1939, when he returned to the Office of the Chief of Air Corps at Washington as assistant executive officer.

General Spaatz in November 1939, received a temporary promotion to colonel, and during the Battle of Britain in 1940, spent several weeks in England as a special military observer. In August 1940, he was assigned in the Office of the Chief of Air Corps, and two months later was appointed assistant to the chief of Air Corps, with the temporary rank of brigadier general. He became chief of the Plans Division of the Air Corps in November 1940, and the following July was named chief of the air staff at Army Air Forces Headquarters.

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor and America's entry into the war, he was named commander of Air Forces Combat Command in January 1942 and promoted to the temporary rank of Major General, but this organization was disbanded the following month by presidential executive order that eliminated both it and the Air Corps as a command echelon of the USAAF. He was subsequently promoted to the permanent rank of Colonel in September 1942

In May 1942 Spaatz became commander of the Eighth Air Force and transferred its headquarters to England in July. Spaatz was placed in overall command of the USAAF in the European Theater of Operations, while retaining his Eighth Air Force command, until subsequently assigned command of the Twelfth Air Force in North Africa in December 1942. Subsequently his role increased as he was named commander the Allied Northwest African Air Force in February 1943, the Fifteenth Air Force and Royal Air Forces in Italy in November 1943, and the U.S. Strategic Air Forces in Europe in January 1944. Spaatz received a temporary promotion to Lieutenant General in March 1943.

As commander of Strategic Air Forces, Spaatz directed the strategic bombing campaign against Germany, directing the Eighth Air Force, which was now commanded by Lt. General Jimmy Doolittle, based in England, and the Fifteenth Air Force, which was now commanded by Lt. General Nathan Twining, based in Italy.

As the commander of Strategic Air Forces in Europe, Spaatz was under the command of Gen. Dwight Eisenhower and the supervision of Gen. Hap Arnold, the USAAF Chief of Staff, and he continued under Gen. Arnold's command in the Pacific.

Carl Spaatz received a temporary promotion to General on March 11, 1945. He was transferred to the Pacific and assumed command of the U.S. Strategic Air Forces in the Pacific as part of the Pacific Theatre of Operations, with headquarters on Guam, in July 1945. From this command, Spaatz directed the strategic bombing of Japan, including the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Spaatz had been present at Reims when the Germans surrendered to the Americans on May 7, 1945; at Berlin when they surrendered to the Russians on May 9; and aboard the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay when the Japanese surrendered on September 2. He was the only man of General rank or equivalent present at all three of these surrenders.

Spaatz made several controversial decisions in his leadership of the American strategic bombing campaign. He insisted on daylight missions despite the British insistence that daylight missions produced unacceptable casualty rates. Spaatz also believed that German oil production should be the primary bombing target despite the official decision that transportation was the primary target. In April 1944, Spaatz ordered bombings of the Ploieşti oilfields in Romania under the subterfuge that the actual targets were the rail lines that supplied the oil production facilities. Despite their great personal friendship, Spaatz sometimes argued with Allied Supreme Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower about military issues. But after the war, Eisenhower said that Spaatz, along with General Omar Bradley, was one of the two American general officers who had contributed the most to the victory in Europe. The USAAF daylight bombing of Germany and Austria broke the back of the Nazi Luftwaffe and gave air supremacy over Europe to the Allied Air Forces.

In July 1945, President Truman nominated Spaatz for promotion to the permanent rank of Major General. Spaatz was appointed commanding general of the Army Air Forces in February 1946 following the retirement of his friend General Henry H. Arnold. After the creation of the independent Air Force by the National Security Act of 1947 and Truman's Executive Order No. 9877, Spaatz was appointed as the first Chief of Staff of the new United States Air Force in September 1947.

Spaatz retired from the military at the rank of General in June 1948. He worked for Newsweek magazine as military affairs editor until 1961. He also served on the Committee of Senior Advisors to the Air Force Chief of Staff, from 1952 until his death. From 1948 until 1959, he served as National Commander of the Civil Air Patrol. In 1954, Spaatz was appointed to the congressional advisory board set up to determine the site for the new United States Air Force Academy. Spaatz died on July 14, 1974 and is buried at the Academy's cemetery in Colorado Springs, Colorado.