About this ebook
In 1924, the RCAF was born. The small, independent service navigated times of boom and bust over the next forty years while taking a key role in nation-building and defending Canadian interests. The Air Marshals explores these transformative decades through the lens of RCAF leadership, profiling the officers who dealt with the turbulent issues of their day: operations, personnel matters, procurement, air force expansion and contraction, training, and professionalization.
Collectively, these profiles highlight the qualities that define effective leadership: the ability to work with all parties, to listen, to act decisively, or to defer when needed. These hallmarks of success remain as true for today’s generation of RCAF commanders as they were for those pioneering leaders.
About the author
Richard Mayne is chief historian and director of the Royal Canadian Air Force History and Heritage Office. Among his many publications on Canadian military history and defence issues is Betrayed: Scandal, Politics, and Canadian Naval Leadership.
Mike Bechthold is a historian with the Royal Canadian Air Force History and Heritage Office and teaches history at Wilfrid Laurier University. He is the author of Flying to Victory: Raymond Collishaw and the Western Desert Campaign, 1940–1941 and editor of Airpower and the Normandy Campaign.
Contributors: Sandy Babcock, Bertram C. Frandsen, William March, Jeff Noakes, Bill Rawling, and Ray Stouffer
