’Caught in the Crossfire’: Sir Gerald Campbell, Lord Beaverbrook and the Near Demise of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, May–October 1940

This essay examines a highly significant but little known incident—the “Campbell affair”—during the first six months of Winston Churchill’s premiership (May–October 1940). As the Battle of Britain raged, an equally important campaign was waged between the Air Ministry and the new Ministry of Aircraft Production, headed by the bumptious Canadian-born peer, Lord Beaverbrook. Corrosive remarks by Beaverbrook, which were reported to Canada’s mercurial premier, W. L. Mackenzie King, and then relayed back to London by Sir Gerald Campbell, Britain’s high commissioner in Ottawa, threatened not only to unhinge Anglo-Canadian wartime relations at a pivotal juncture of the war, but also to jettison the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan.