Charles Portal

Sir Charles Portal (1893-1971) was a British Chief of Air Staff during the World War Two and advocate of strategic bombing.

Charles Portal was born May 21 1893 in Hungerford. He was educated in Christ Church, Oxford.

In the beginning of the World War One, Portal joined the British Army and served as a dispatch rider in the motorcycle section of Royal Engineers in the western front. In December 1914 he was given command of all riders in the 1st Corps Headquarters Signals Company.

In 1915 Portal was transferred to Royal Flying Corps, first as an observer and eventually a flying officer. He reached the rank of lieutenant colonel and earned Military Cross and Distinguished Flying Cross.

After the war he took over No 7 squadron 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 as Air Vice Marshal.

By 1939 Portal was a member of the air council and Director of Organization in the Air Ministry. Just prior to outbreak of the World War Two he was ordered to establish 30 new air bases in Britain. At the outbreak of the war in September he was made acting air marshal and in the 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 in August 25 1940. The result was that Hermann Göring ordered Luftwaffe to bomb London instead of British airfields. The Blitz begun. Winston Churchill was impressed and Portal was knighted in July 1940.

October 1940 Portal he was appointed as a Chief of Air Staff with the rank of air chief marshal. 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 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. The new policy caused 600.000 civilian casualties in Germany and also loss of 57.142 men in bomber crews due to heavy anti-aircraft fire.

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

In January 1944 Portal was promoted Marshal of the Royal Air Force. 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 duty strategic bombing, who forced Portal to back down. In March 1945 Churchill gave the final order to stop area bombing.

After the war in 1945 Portal retired from the RAF and in August created Baron Portal of Hungerford and year later a viscount. In 1946-1951 he was Controller of Atomic Energy and in 1960 was elected chairman of the British Aircraft Corporation.

Sir Charles Portal died April 22 1971.