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8Maguire, possibly supported by another RAF officer, L Y K Murray, who first proposed to one of the sub8committees the formation of a separate air service. To cut a long story short the Maguire proposal went to the Australian Defence Council, which in January 1919 concurred in turn, and authorised the creation of the air service committee with authority to spend up to %u00a3500,000 on the new service.3 Maguire, a Royal Air Force officer, was thus the key player agitating effectively for the creation of the RAAF from an early stage. As the air adviser to the RAN, he was in a unique position not only to advance the cause of a separate air force, but also simultaneously to ensure that there was no concerted naval opposition to it. As the RAN Naval Board neither endorsed nor rejected his proposals, he seems as their air adviser to have devised policy himself. Without Maguire it seems unlikely that the separate RAAF would have got off the ground. We may surmise that his motive in proposing an independent RAAF was to ensure a slice of the aviation cake for the RAN. One area in which Maguire fought hard but failed was in attempting to ensure that the administration of the air service would be free from control by either the military or naval boards. The irony here is that the RAN was in due course to regret the formation of a separate service and within a few years was to do its level best to create a separate Australian fleet air arm. The reason being an act of singular generosity from Britain which was to underpin the RAAF and indeed the other dominion air services in their early years. In June 1919 Australia was offered 100 modern aircraft as gift by the British government, a proposal subsequently increased to 128 to reciprocate Australian wartime gift aircraft. I want to spend a little time analysing the Imperial Gift, as it become known, as it can rightly be identified as a crucial element in the formation and survival of the RAAF, and other dominion air forces.4 The gift had several effects, some better than others. In the first place it insulated the nascent RAAF against economic reality. Even as the gift was being prepared for despatch the economic reality in Australia at the time was biting deep into the pioneer airmen%u2019s plans and the infant air service committee even telegraphed London with the downbeat message that the gift aircraft could be %u2018shipped when convenient to Air Ministry and stored here.%u20195 Had the Commonwealth of Australia had to proceed with its tentative plans to buy aircraft at