Establishment of The Royal Australian Air Force
Goble returned to Australia on HT Gaika in November 1918. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 1919 New Year Honours, and made an acting lieutenant colonel in May that year. He received a permanent commission as a squadron leader and honorary wing commander in the RAF on 1 August 1919, and was seconded to the Royal Australian Navy.
When a temporary Air Board was set up to examine the feasibility of an Australian Air Force (AAF), Goble was assigned as a Navy representative, with Lieutenant Colonel Richard Williams, an Australian Flying Corps veteran of World War I, acting as an Army spokesman. The permanent Australian Air Board was established on 9 November 1920, and recommended creation of the AAF as an independent branch of the armed services. The AAF came into being on 31 March 1921—the 'Royal' prefix being granted five months later—and Goble resigned his commission in the RAF the same day to transfer to the new service as a wing commander.
The Navy had nominated Goble as First Air Member (later Chief of the Air Staff), however Williams took the post and Goble became Second Air Member and Director of Personnel and Training. Williams and Goble would serve as Chief of the Air Staff (CAS) three times each between 1922 and 1940. One motive suggested for the rotation was a ploy by Army and Navy interests to limit Williams' autonomy. Instead, according to RAAF historian Alan Stephens, the arrangement "almost inevitably fostered an unproductive rivalry" between the two officers, which was "exacerbated by the personality differences between the pedantic, autocratic Williams and the cheerful, easy-going Goble". Although in a legal sense the Air Board led the RAAF rather than the CAS alone, Williams dominated the board to such an extent that Goble would later complain that his colleague appeared to consider the Air Force his personal command.
Read more about this topic: Stanley Goble, Inter-war Years
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