General records of the Air Boards and Air Ministry

General records of the Air Boards, Air Ministry and successors at the Ministry of Defence including records of the Permanent Under Secretary for Air and Civil Aviation Department relating to the administration of military aviation and civil aviation:

• Registered files, AIR 2
• Air Board and Air Council, minutes and memoranda, AIR 6
• Air publications and reports, AIR 10
• Periodical returns, intelligence summaries and bulletins, AIR 22
• Submission papers to sovereign, AIR 30
• Industrial Whitley Council, minutes and papers, AIR 31
• 'Air Ministry Orders', AIR 72

Records of the Civil Aviation Department of the Air Ministry will also be found in:

AVIA 2

BT 217

BT 218

• Air Ministry, Department of the Secretary, 1918-1938
• Air Ministry, Permanent Under Secretary of State for Air, 1938-1964

Topics

Labour

Air Force

Air transport

Armed Forces (General Administration)

The Secretary of the Air Ministry, known from 1938 as the Permanent Under Secretary of State for Air, was secretary of the Air Council and head of the ministry's civil establishment. As such, he had responsibility for matters relating to finance, establishment and organisation and for secretariat divisions 'bedded out' in departments of other members of the Air Council. He was also responsible for certain central services such as the Central Statistical Branch, the Information Division, the Air Historical Branch and the Meterorological Office.

When the functions of the Air Member for Development and Production passed to the Ministry of Aircraft Production in 1940, the appropriate parts of the permanent secretary's organisation, particularly those relating to finance and contracts, were also transferred.

With the assumption of civil aviation responsibilities under the Air Navigation Act of 1919, a Civil Aviation Department was set up in the Air Ministry. The Meteorological Office and Inspector of Accidents were originally under the Civil Aviation Department, but the former passed under the administrative control of the secretary of the Air Ministry in 1922 and the latter became head of a separate Accidents Branch in 1927.

In 1936 the department was expanded under a director general, although under the Air Navigation Act of that year certain regulatory functions connected with civil aircraft were delegated to a newly-constituted Air Registration Board. Civil aviation was severely restricted during the Second World War. In April 1945 the Civil Aviation Department was transferred to a new Civil Aviation Ministry.