HAMMERTON, Sir John, editor. ABC of the RAF: Handbook for All Branches of the Air Force. London: The Amalgamated Press Limited, 1942.
New and enlarged wartime edition, specially bound for Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal, Chief of the Air Staff, with C.F.A.P. gilt-stamped to the lower cover, for Charles Frederick Algernon Portal. Blue leather-grain binding, gilt RAF badge and title to upper cover, all edges gilt, bright blue patterned endpapers. With a colour frontispiece portrait of King George VI, colour plates, photographs, diagrams, rank charts, aircraft recognition material, and sections on every branch of the wartime RAF.
This is no ordinary copy of a wartime handbook. The printed edition was a popular guide to the RAF at war, issued with Portal’s own preface as Chief of the Air Staff. In that preface, reproduced here with his portrait and facsimile signature, Portal describes the book as “an up-to-date guide to the varied and numerous activities of the R.A.F.” and notes that it would be useful not only to prospective recruits but also to families across the Empire with sons, brothers or friends serving in the air forces. For the man who supplied that preface to have had this copy specially bound for himself gives the volume a striking personal and institutional significance.
Portal was then at the summit of British air command. Appointed Chief of the Air Staff in October 1940, he remained in post throughout the war, shaping RAF strategy through the bomber offensive, the defence of Britain, and the vast technical and organisational expansion reflected in these pages. The book’s contents - aircraft types, trades, ranks, training, women’s auxiliary service, recognition tables and airborne troops - read almost like a portable map of the service Portal commanded.
A very good and highly attractive copy. Light handling, mild internal age-toning and minor rubbing, but the gilt remains bright, the binding handsome, and the contents clean and complete in appearance. A unique RAF high-command association copy.
