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11saddled with a board with more senior army and navy representatives. Williams, writing to Trenchard in December 1927, stated that: %u2018At the rate we are going we will never get the necessary proportion of air force units and I find youth and junior rank against me when I try to impress these facts.%u201911 Semi8isolated as he was, Williams undoubtedly looked to the iconic British air marshal for advice and support from the very beginning of his tenure. He wrote to Trenchard in January 1921 thanking him for the advice that had already been provided by the RAF and requesting his mentor%u2019s views on the recently approved memorandum outlining the future lines of development for the Australian service. Trenchard instructed the air staff in London to examine the memorandum closely and draft a response.12 Which brings us to the RAF/RAAF relationship during the crucial period of the 1920s and 1930s. In the decades leading up to the Second World War, the philosophical and intellectual input remained very high. Because Australian security policy throughout the period was faced with the problem of defining its defence in an imperial context, at a time when British resources were thinly stretched, and the dominion economic base was insufficient to sustain an independent defence posture, all the services drew moral and physical support from the imperial structure. In the case of the RAAF the RAF provided the most tangible justification for its continued existence. Without an RAF to point to as being the imperial model for the service it is difficult to see how the RAAF could have survived. In October 1923 the Committee of Imperial Defence provided the RAAF with a framework for future development within an imperial context first in The %u2018father of the RAAF%u2019, Air Marshal Sir Richard Williams KBE CB DSO. (AWM)