Iraq Command - Report. October, 1922 - April, 1924. Air Publication 1105.

First and only edition, one of 375 copies, of which we have traced only two others (British Library and National Archives). This informative publication, issued for official use only with maps that were originally classified CONFIDENTIAL, reproduces Air Vice-Marshal J. M. Salmond's report on the early years of Iraq Command. At the end of the First World War, the newly amalgamated RAF took the lead in imperial policy. With the outbreak of revolt in 1920, Churchill, as Secretary of State for Air and for War, instructed Hugh Trenchard, the Chief of the Air Staff, to repeat in Iraq the success of the aerial campaign against the "Mad Mullah" in Somaliland; by 1922, all operations were consolidated under Iraq Command. "Iraq was the RAF's biggest challenge in the 1920s. First, the area of operations included three separate fronts or areas of concern. Consequently, the operations in each area had their own unique circumstances. Second, Britain and the RAF stayed engaged in the area throughout the interwar period, and as such, doctrinal development is easily tracked in successive command reports" (Longoria, p. 19). In the period covered by this publication, operations included countering uprisings around Baghdad and Sheikh Mahmud Barzanji's insurgency among the Kurds, and executing bombing runs against the Wahhabist Ikhwan raiders crossing from Najd. Salmond is sanguine about the future: "I am well aware of the caution which must be exercised in forecasting, however, tentatively, changes and innovations in the methods of war But I venture to think that when the peculiar value and suitability of air power, both for the direction and conduct of small warfare, is more generally understood, important changes may take place alike in its tactics and in the composition of the force employed" (p. 52). M. A. Longoria, A Historical View of Air Policing Doctrine, 1993. Octavo. With 2 large folding colour maps (Map 1: bounded by Baghdad in north and Kuwait in south; Map 2: extending north from Baghdad to Turkish border. Each unfolding to approx. 710 x 610 mm). Original blue-grey card wrappers, wire-stitched as issued, front cover lettered in black. Posthumous bookplate of Peter Hopkirk, scholar of British imperial history, on inside front cover; "confidential" classification on first map crossed out. Binding lightly toned, rear cover pulled away from staples but secure, folding maps now detached from their staples due to bulk but still well preserved: very good.…