Cyril Newall , 1st Baron Newall Marshal of the Royal Air Force Cyril Louis Norton Newall , 1st Baron Newall ( 15 February 1886 – 30 November 1963 ) was a senior officer of the British Army and Royal Air Force . He commanded units of the Royal Flying Corps and Royal Air Force in the First World War , and served as Chief of the Air Staff during the first years of the Second World War . From 1941 to 1946 he was the Governor - General of New Zealand . Born to a military family , Newall studied at Sandhurst before taking a commission as a junior officer in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment in 1905 . After transferring to the 2nd Gurkha Rifles in the Indian Army , he saw active service on the North West Frontier , but after learning to fly in 1911 turned towards a career in military aviation . During the First World War he rose from a flying instructor to command of No . 41 Wing , the main strategic bombing force , and was awarded the Albert Medal for putting out a fire in an explosives store . He served in staff positions through the 1920s and was Air Officer Commanding the Middle East Command in the early 1930s before becoming Air Member for Supply and Organisation in 1935 . Newall was appointed Chief of the Air Staff in 1937 and , in that role , supported sharp increases in aircraft production , increasing expenditure on the new , heavily - armed , Hurricane and Spitfire fighters , essential to re - equip Fighter Command . However , he was sacked after the Battle of Britain after political intrigue caused him to lose Churchill ' s confidence . In 1941 he was appointed Governor - General of New Zealand , holding office until 1946 . Early life . Newall was born to Lieutenant - Colonel William Potter Newall and Edith Gwendoline Caroline Newall ( née Norton ) . After education at Bedford School , he attended the Royal Military College , Sandhurst . After leaving Sandhurst , he was commissioned into the Royal Warwickshire Regiment on 16 August 1905 . He was promoted to lieutenant on 18 November 1908 , and transferred to the 2nd King Edward VII ' s Own Gurkha Rifles on 16 September 1909 . He served on the North - West Frontier , where he first encountered his future colleague Hugh Dowding ; at an exercise in 1909 , Dowding ' s artillery section ambushed Newall ' s Gurkhas whilst they were still breakfasting . Newall began to turn towards a career in aviation in 1911 , when he learned to fly in a Bristol Biplane at Larkhill whilst on leave in England . He held certificate No . 144 issued by the Royal Aero Club . He later passed a formal course at the Central Flying School , Upavon in 1913 , and began working as a pilot trainer there from 17 November 1913 ; it was intended that he would form part of a flight training school to be established in India , but he had not yet left England when the First World War broke out . World War I . On the outbreak of war , Newall was in England . On 12 September 1914 , he was given the temporary rank of captain , and attached to the Royal Flying Corps as a flight commander , to serve with No . 1 Squadron on the Western Front . He was promoted to the permanent rank of captain on 22 September , effective from 16 August . On 24 March 1915 he was promoted to major and appointed to command No . 12 Squadron , flying BE2c aircraft in France from September onwards . The squadron took part in the Battle of Loos , bombing railways and carrying out reconnaissance missions in October 1915 . On taking command of the squadron , he chose to stop flying personally in order to concentrate on administration , a decision which was regarded dismissively by his men ; relations were strained until January 1916 , when he demonstrated his courage by walking into a burning bomb store to try to control the fire . He was awarded the Albert Medal for this act on the personal recommendation of General Hugh Trenchard , and in February 1916 was promoted to lieutenant - colonel and given command of Training No . 6 Wing in England . In December 1916 he took command of No . 9 Wing in France , a long - range bomber and reconnaissance formation , and in October 1917 took command of the newly formed No . 41 Wing . This was upgraded as the 8th Brigade in December , with Newall promoted accordingly to the temporary rank of brigadier - general on 28 December 1917 . During 1918 , it joined the Independent Bombing Force , which was the main strategic bombing arm of the newly formed Royal Air Force . In June 1918 Newall was appointed the Deputy Commander of the Independent Bombing Force , serving under Trenchard . Newall was awarded the Croix d ' Officier of the French Legion of Honour on 10 October 1918 , and appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George on 1 January 1919 , a Commander of the Order of the British Empire on 3 June 1919 and an officer of the Belgian Order of Leopold on 18 April 1921 . Between the wars . Newall was granted a permanent commission in the Royal Air Force as a lieutenant colonel on 1 August 1919 and promoted to group captain on 8 August 1919 . He became Deputy Director of Personnel at the Air Ministry in August 1919 and then Deputy Commandant of the apprentices ' technical training school in August 1922 . He married May Weddell in 1922 ; she died in September 1924 , and he remarried the following year to Olive Foster , an American woman . He had three children with Foster , a son and two daughters . Newall was promoted to air commodore on 1 January 1925 , and took command of the newly formed Auxiliary Air Force in May 1925 . He was appointed to a League of Nations disarmament committee in December 1925 and then became Deputy Chief of the Air Staff and Director of Operations and Intelligence on 12 April 1926 . He was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath in the 1929 Birthday Honours and , having been promoted to air vice marshal on 1 January 1930 , he stood down as Deputy Chief on 6 February 1931 . He became Air Officer Commanding Wessex Bombing Area in February 1931 and then Air Officer Commanding Middle East Command in September 1931 . He then returned to the Air Ministry , where he became Air Member for Supply and Organisation on 14 January 1935 , during the beginnings of the pre - war expansion and rearmament . He was advanced to Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in the 1935 Birthday Honours and promoted to air marshal on 1 July 1935 . He attended the funeral of King George V in January 1936 . Philosophically , Newall remained a close follower of Trenchard during the interwar period ; his time in the Independent Bombing Force had left him convinced that strategic bombing was an exceptionally powerful weapon , and one that could not effectively be defended against . In this , he was a supporter of the standard doctrine of the day , which suggested that the destructive power of a bomber force was sufficiently great that it could cripple an industrial economy in short order , and that so merely its " presence " could potentially serve as an effective deterrent . He was promoted to air chief marshal on 1 April 1937 . Chief of the Air Staff . On 1 September 1937 , Newall was appointed as Chief of the Air Staff , the military head of the RAF , in succession to Sir Edward Ellington . The promotion was unexpected ; of the prospective candidates mooted for the job , Newall has been widely seen by historians as the least gifted . The most prominent candidate was Hugh Dowding , the head of RAF Fighter Command and senior in rank to Newall by three months , who had been informally told by Ellington in 1936 that he was expected to be appointed as the new Chief of the Air Staff . The decision was taken by the Air Minister , Viscount Swinton , without consulting Ellington for advice . During 1936 and 1937 , the Air Staff had been fighting with the Cabinet over the rearmament plans ; the Air Staff wanted a substantial bomber force and only minor increases in fighters , whilst the Minister for Defence Co - ordination , Sir Thomas Inskip , successfully pushed for a greater role for the fighter force . Newall was promoted during the middle of this debate , and proved perhaps more flexible than might have been expected . In 1938 he supported sharp increases in aircraft production , including double - shift working and duplication of factories , and pushed for the creation of a dedicated organisation to repair and refit damaged aircraft . He supported expenditure on the new , heavily - armed , Hurricane and Spitfire fighters , essential to re - equip Fighter Command . He even began to distance himself , albeit slightly , from orthodox bomber philosophy , noting to the Minister for Air that " no one can say with absolute certainty that a nation can be knocked out from the air , because no - one has yet attempted it " . Discussing plans for reacting to a war with Italy , in early 1939 , he opposed a French proposal to force Italy ' s surrender by the use of heavy bombing raids against the north , arguing that it would be unlikely to force the country out of the war without the need for ground combat . Newall was advanced to Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath in the 1938 Birthday Honours . He was still Chief of the Air Staff at the outbreak of the Second World War on 1 September 1939 ; his main contribution to the war effort was his successful resistance to the transfer of fighter squadrons to aid the collapsing French thus preserving a large portion of Fighter Command which would become crucial during the Battle of Britain . While he remained committed to the idea of a " knock - out blow " offensive by Bomber Command , he also recognised that it was too weak to do so successfully , but still strongly opposed the use of the RAF for close air support . Following the end of the Battle of Britain , Newall was quickly forced into retirement and replaced as Chief of the Air Staff by Sir Charles Portal . Contemporaries attributed this to the effects of overwork , which had certainly taken its toll , but there were also other aspects ; Newall had lost political support , particularly following a dispute with Lord Beaverbrook over the control of aircraft production and repair . Matters came to a head with the circulation of an anonymous memo attacking Newall , among other senior officers , as " a real weakness to the RAF and to the nation ' s defences " . The author was Edgar McCloughry , a disaffected staff officer who saw himself as passed over for promotion and who had been brought into Beaverbrook ' s inner circle . Beaverbrook pressed Churchill to dismiss Newall , gaining the support of influential ex - RAF figures such as Trenchard and Salmond . Trenchard had come out against Newall for his failure to launch a decisive strategic bombing offensive , while Salmond saw Newall ' s removal as the simplest way to replace Dowding as head of Fighter Command - despite Newall having also sought to sack Dowding . He was promoted to Marshal of the Royal Air Force on 4 October 1940 and retired from the RAF later that month . He was awarded the Order of Merit on 29 October , and made a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George on 21 November . New Zealand and later life . In February 1941 Newall was appointed Governor - General of New Zealand , a post he would hold for the remainder of the war . His time there was mostly quiet – described by one biographer as " a nice long rest " – and he toured the country extensively , referring to the war " in every public address " . Newall and his wife , who also carried out an extensive program of engagements , were broadly popular , but there were occasional tensions ; shortly after his arrival , it was widely ( but mistakenly ) rumoured that he had slighted the " men " of the Army in favour of the " gentlemen " of the RNZAF in a speech . A Freemason , Newall became Grand Master of New Zealand ' s Grand Lodge while Governor - General . Politically , he had a lukewarm relationship with the Prime Minister , Peter Fraser – " I can ' t persuade myself that he is all he quite appears to be " , Newall noted in a private report – but the two worked together effectively . Small problems occasionally flared up , such as that in October 1942 , when Fraser was reprimanded for not personally informing Newall of the resignation of four ministers . However , only one developed into a direct confrontation , when Newall became the last Governor - General to refuse to follow the advice of his cabinet . Newall was presented with a government recommendation to remit four prisoners sentenced to be flogged , but refused to do so . He argued that if the government was opposed to flogging , it should repeal the legislation rather than simply remitting the sentences , and that it was constitutionally improper for the government to retain the law while ignoring it . Fraser , and his deputy Walter Nash , refused to accept this response , and the impasse stretched out for several days ; in the end , a compromise was reached where Newall remitted the sentences but the government undertook to repeal the legislation . A second conflict emerged just before the end of his term , when in 1945 , the Labour government sought to abolish the country quota , a system that gave additional electoral seats in rural areas . Farming groups – predominantly National - supporting – strongly opposed the move , and argued that such a major change could only be made after gaining approval in a general election . Newall sympathised , and advised Fraser to wait until after the election , but did not feel it was appropriate to intervene ; he assented to the bill . Following his return from New Zealand in 1946 , Newall was raised to the peerage as Baron Newall , of Clifton upon Dunsmoor , in the county of Warwick . He spoke in the House of Lords rarely , making five speeches between 1946 and 1948 and one in 1959 , mostly addressing defence issues . Newall died at his home at Welbeck Street in London on 30 November 1963 , at which time his son Francis inherited his title .