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12the form of an air staff memorandum on The Development of Dominion Air Forces13, and then more specifically in a further memorandum, number 208C, on the Air Requirements of the Dominions %u2013 Australia prepared for the Imperial Conference of 1923. At meetings with Trenchard and other RAF officers in late 1923 General Blamey, Admiral Hall Thompson, and Williams agreed to the proposals in CID 208C as the basis on which the RAAF would plan.14Thus, from the very start the RAAF took a model prepared by the RAF as the basis for its future planning. The RAAF consistently used the periodic imperial conferences to draw moral, intellectual and physical sustenance from the RAF. Thus the 1923 Conference and the follow up meetings with Trenchard mentioned above opened up several avenues for the infant Australian service, including provision for short service commissions in the RAF, the attachment of RAAF officers to the RAF, and the provision of specialist training in RAF schools.15 Both the politicians and the other two services sought to limit the extent to which Williams could use the RAF as a surrogate for RAAF ambitions, but Trenchard and Williams exchanged regular letters, and the latter was able to use the former as a conduit to pass or reinforce ideas and suggestions to Australian ministers that his own rank or constitutional position made difficult.16 In the early years it undoubtedly made economic and practical sense for a force, which on its formation numbered 151 personnel all told and which struggled to reach a thousand permanent personnel through its first decade, to draw on the far greater resources of the RAF. The RAAF therefore not only adopted RAF training syllabi, but adhered to RAF publications, practices and standards wherever possible.17 In terms of higher staff training and specialist training in areas such as photography, navigation and weapons training the RAAF relied almost entirely on the RAF. The details of the short service commission scheme put forward at the 1923 Conference were agreed in early 1924, with the details being thrashed out in the meetings in London involving Blamey, Williams and various RAF officers and Air Ministry officials. Both air forces benefited greatly from the short service scheme. In essence the RAAF was able to develop its flying training organisation, specifically No 1 FTS, on a viable scale large enough to justify the number of instructors required