#ResearchNote – The RAF Staff College (Overseas) at Haifa

By Dr Ross Mahoney

Editorial note: This article first appeared on the author’s website. It has been reproduced here with permission.

During its existence from 1922 to 1997, the Royal Air Force (RAF) Staff College was located in several different places. When the Staff College was initially founded in 1922, it was located at Andover and remained there until the course was suspended in 1940. When the RAF reestablished its Staff College in late 1941, it did so at Bulstrode Park, Gerrards Cross. The first course at Bulstrode Park began in January 1942. It remained here until the Staff College transferred to Bracknell in 1945. At the same time as the move to Bracknell, a detachment of the Staff College remained at Gerrards Cross, and this eventually transferred to Andover in 1948. Bracknell was responsible for providing command and staff training to officers of the RAF, the United States Air Force, and members of the air forces of the ‘old’ Dominions. Andover provided command and staff training to members of the RAF and other foreign air forces. In 1965, it was announced that the two Staff Colleges would merge and be located in Bracknell. This eventually happened at the end of 1969. This is where the Staff College remained and eventually merged to become the Joint Services Command and Staff College in 1997.

This, however, is not the whole story. As well as its primary Staff College in the UK, the RAF also provided command and staff training in the Middle East at Haifa, Palestine (modern-day Israel), for four years. In 1940, the British Army established the Middle East Staff School, and in late 1941, they admitted RAF students to the No. 5 War Course. Then, from No. 6 War Course in early 1942, an RAF Wing was added to the Middle East Staff School.[1] During the No. 12 War Course in 1944, the RAF Wing became its own reporting unit, the RAF Staff College (Overseas).[2] It came under the administrative control of Air Headquarters Levant. The first Commandant was Air Commodore S.H.C. Gray, formerly the senior RAF instructor at the Middle East Staff School. The object of Haifa was to ‘train Staff Officers, not necessarily Commanders’ while the syllabus mirrored that undertaken at the Staff College back in the UK.[3] The last course, No. 16 War Course, took place in 1946 and ended in October. After this date, both the RAF Staff College and Army Staff College (the Middle East Staff School had been redesignated the Middle East Staff College in 1943) were disbanded.[4]

It is hard, without further research, to assess the impact of the RAF Staff College (Overseas) at Haifa, but it was clearly an important institution. As the then Wing Commander R.A. Mason (later Air Vice-Marshal Professor Tony Mason) noted in 1972, ‘the constant opportunities for joint service studies [at Haifa] conferred no small advantage on the Middle Eastern College over its Gerrards Cross counterpart.’[5] However, Mason’s conclusion was not his own, and context is important here. As the RAF Staff College prepared to commemorate the 50^th Anniversary of its establishment, two publications appear to have been commissioned to detail the history of the institution.[6] The first was a history of the Staff College, written by Mason and widely cited by historians since. However, his was not the only volume commissioned. Another volume of the history of the Staff College at Haifa was also commissioned. Squadron Leader D.J. Read wrote this. This history detailed the Staff College at Haifa, but, unlike Mason’s more widely known counterpart, it is not widely cited. Indeed, I know of several copies in the library at the RAF Museum and a copy at the National Archives at Kew.[7] Importantly, while Mason details Haifa in his history, he is indebted to Read’s history.[8] For example, while Mason noted the importance of ‘jointery’ at Haifa, it was Read who reflected that:

Sometime in the future 2, or all 3, of Britain’s armed forces may well decide to combine their Staff Colleges into one establishment. If and when this occurs there may well be a temptation to acclaim the occurrence as a ‘first’. But perhaps someone will be around to remind the publicists that, for a few years in the mid-1940s, the Army and Royal Air Force had co-located Staff Colleges at The Telsch Hotel on Mount Carmel, Haifa.[9]

Of course, the Staff Colleges of the RAF, British Army and Royal would eventually amalgamate to form the Joint Services Command and Staff College, originally located on the site of the RAF Staff College at Bracknell.

Dr Ross Mahoney is an independent scholar specialising in the history of war, with a particular focus on the use of air power and the history of air warfare. He is the Editor-in-Chief of From Balloons to Drones and currently the Senior Historian within the Heritage Policy team at Brisbane City Council in Australia. He has nearly 20 years of experience in the education, museum and heritage sectors in Australia and the United Kingdom, including serving as the inaugural Historian at the Royal Air Force Museum between 2013 and 2017. His other research interests are military leadership and command, military culture, and the history and development of professional military education. He also maintains an interest in transport history. He has published numerous articles, chapters and encyclopedia entries, edited two books, and delivered papers on three continents. His website is here.

Header image: Flying Officer C.L. Collings, Officer in charge of the Desert Air Force’s Anti-Malaria Control Unit, lectures to pilots and ground crew of No. 152 Squadron RAF on defence tactics against the disease, in front of one of the Squadron’s Supermarine Spitfire Mark VCs at Lentini East, Sicily, c. 1943. (Source: IWM (CNA 1235))

[1] Squadron Leader D.J. Read, The Royal Air Force Staff College at Haifa, 1942-46 (Bracknell: RAF Staff College, 1972), p. 1.

[2] Ibid., p. 11.

[3] ‘Annex C – Middle East Staff School – Joining Instructions for RAF Officers, 2 April 1943’ in Ibid., p. C-1; ‘Annex D – Middle East Air Order No. 1261 – Formation of RAF Staff College (Overseas), 30 September 1944’ in Ibid., p. D-1.

[4] Ibid., p. 7, 19.

[5] Wing Commander R.A. Mason, History of the Royal Air Force Staff College, 1922-1972 (Bracknell: RAF Staff College, 1972), p. 28.

[6] Read, The Royal Air Force at Staff College at Haifa, p. i.

[7] It can be found in AIR 20/11980 at The National Archives at Kew.

[8] Mason, History of the Royal Air Force Staff College, p. 28, fn. 28.

[9] Read, The Royal Air Force Staff College at Haifa, p. 25.