Park: The Biography of Air Chief Marshal Sir Keith Park, GCB, KBE, MC, DFC, DCL

by Vincent Orange

The value of air supply was appreciated, continued the War Office, and it therefore regretted that Park should set out for posterity ‘a series of small faults on the Army side of air supply.’ There was much to learn in dealing with a problem never previously visualized, let alone tackled. The comparison with the Americans was unfair because they worked from bases established months before and lavishly equipped; the British had had to make do from hastily built bases stocked as best as possible. Numerous changes to Park’s text were suggested, four of which had particular substance. One, that the prime cause of Japan’s defeat in Burma had been the victory of the British infantry; air supply and support had not been, in the army’s opinion, the prime cause. Eventually and reluctantly, Park accepted this. Two, although Park had said, justly, that without air supply the campaign could not have been successful, it was equally true that without ‘horrific efforts’ by the army to provide airfields, fuel and bomb dumps, air supply could never have been exploited.