page_title: Chief of Air Force (Australia)
section_title: 1922–38: Williams and Goble
hierarchical_section_title: Chief of Air Force (Australia) / History / 1922–38: Williams and Goble
caption_attribution_description: English: AWM caption&#160;: Group portrait of members of the Air Board. Left to right: Back row&#160;: Mr P. E. Coleman (Secretary) Mr A. C. Joyce (Finance member) Front row&#160;: Group Captain S. J. Goble (Director of Personnel and Training) Air Commodore R. Williams (Director of Intelligence and Organisation) Wing Commander R. A. Mcbain (Director of Equipment)
context_page_description: Chief of Air Force is the most senior appointment in the Royal Australian Air Force, responsible to the Chief of the Defence Force and the Secretary of the Department of Defence. The rank associated with the position is air marshal. The role encompasses "the delivery of aerospace capability, enhancing the Air Force's reputation and positioning the Air Force for the future". It does not include direction of air operations, which is the purview of the Air Commander Australia, a two-star position responsible directly to CDF in such circumstances but nominally reporting to CAF.
  Between 1922 and 1997, the Air Force's senior officer was known as Chief of the Air Staff, a role akin to a chairman of the board. The Australian Air Board was collectively responsible for directing the RAAF, rather than the CAS personally. Wing Commander Richard Williams, often referred to as the "Father of the RAAF", was the first and longest-serving Chief of the Air Staff. In 1976 the Air Board was dissolved and CAS was invested with the individual responsibility for commanding the RAAF. The position of CAS became known as Chief of Air Force in 1997.
context_section_description: The position now known as Chief of Air Force had its beginnings in the years immediately following World War I. A permanent Air Board was instituted on 9 November 1920 to oversee the day-to-day running of a proposed Australian Air Force, which would succeed the extant Australian Air Corps that had itself succeeded the wartime Australian Flying Corps. On 31 March 1921, the Australian Air Force came into being, the "Royal" prefix being added five months later.
  Wing Commander (later Air Marshal Sir) Richard Williams served as the first Chief of the Air Staff, commencing in 1922. The senior member of the Air Board, from April 1921 until October 1922 Williams was known as First Air Member, the fledgling Air Force initially not being deemed suitable for a Chief of Staff appointment equivalent to the Army and Navy.
  Wing Commander (later Air Vice Marshal) Stanley Goble took over as CAS from Williams in December 1922, and over the next 17 years the two World War I veterans alternated in the position, an arrangement that "almost inevitably fostered an unproductive rivalry" according to RAAF historian Dr Alan Stephens. The Chief of the Air Staff position was intended to be "first among equals' on the Air Board, with decisions arrived at collectively and members able to submit dissenting reports to the Minister for Air if they wished, but Williams dominated the Board in the 1920s and 30s to such an extent that in 1939 Goble complained that his colleague appeared to consider the Air Force his personal command.
  Cumulatively Williams served longer as CAS than any other officer, over 13 years, and is accorded much of the credit for maintaining the RAAF's position as an independent service in the face of attempts to turn it into a branch of either the Army or Navy. For this achievement, as much as for his involvement in its establishment, he is, in Stephens' words, "properly regarded as the 'father' of the Air Force".
caption: The inaugural Air Board, including Group Captain Stanley Goble (front row, left) and Air Commodore Richard Williams (front row, centre)
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