Editing Air Ministry (section)

==Activities==

===Aircraft production===
The Air Ministry issued specifications for aircraft that British aircraft companies would supply prototypes to. These were then assessed, if ordered the Ministry assigned the aircraft name. (see [[List of Air Ministry specifications]]).

The ordering procedure used I.T.P. (Intention to Proceed) contract papers; these specified a maximum fixed price, which could (after investigation) be less. But when [[Lord Nuffield]] got the I.T.P.  contract papers for a Wolseley radial aero engine, which would have required re-orientation of their offices with an army of chartered accountants, he decided to deal only with the War Office and the Admiralty, not the Air Ministry. So the aero engine project was abandoned in 1936, see [[Airspeed Ltd#Wolseley engine|Airspeed]].  [[Nevil Shute Norway]] wrote that the loss of such a technically advanced engine was a great loss to Britain as well as Airspeed, and blamed the over-cautious high civil servants of the Air Ministry. When he had asked Lord Nuffield to retain the engine, Nuffield said: ''I tell you, Norway ... I sent that I.T.P. thing back to them, and I told them they could put it where the monkey put the nuts!''<ref>''Slide Rule'' by [[Nevil Shute]] (1954, William Heinemann, London) page 235</ref>

In later years the actual production of aircraft was the responsibility of the [[Ministry of Aircraft Production]] (1940–46), the [[Ministry of Supply]] (1946–59), the [[Ministry of Aviation]] (1959–67) and finally the [[Ministry of Technology]] (1967–70).

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===Research and development===
In the 1920s and early 1930s research and development was more than 20% of the Air Ministry’s total expenditure on aircraft and equipment, making it the largest research and development spending institution in Britain, until it was outstripped by private industry in the later 1930s.<ref>[[David Edgerton (historian)]] (2013) England and the Aeroplane Militarism, Modernity and Machines London Penguin ISBN 978-0-141-97516-0  pp56-7</ref>

===Weather forecasting===
The Air Ministry was responsible for [[weather forecasting]] over the UK, from 1919 it being the government department responsible for the [[Met Office|Meteorological Office]].

As a result of the need for weather information for aviation, the Meteorological Office located many of its observation and data collection points on [[Royal Air Force station|RAF station]]s.

===World War II technology===
In the 1930s, the Air Ministry commissioned a scientific study of propagating electromagnetic energy which concluded that a [[death ray]] was impractical but detection of aircraft appeared feasible.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.doramusic.com/Radar.htm |title=Radar |access-date=6 May 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110710144447/http://www.doramusic.com/Radar.htm |archive-date=10 July 2011 }}</ref> [[Robert Watson-Watt]] demonstrated a working prototype and patented the device in 1935 (British Patent GB593017).<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.radar-france.fr/brevet%20radar1934.htm |title=Copy of Patents for the invention of radar |publisher=radar-france.fr |language=fr |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090116093441/http://www.radar-france.fr/brevet%20radar1934.htm |archive-date=16 January 2009 }}</ref><ref>[http://www.patent.gov.uk/media/pressrelease/2001/1009.htm British man first to patent radar] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060719224405/http://www.patent.gov.uk/media/pressrelease/2001/1009.htm |date=19 July 2006 }} official site of the ''Patent Office''</ref><ref>{{patent|GB|593017|''Improvements in or relating to wireless systems''}}</ref> The device served as the base for the [[Chain Home]] network of radars to defend Great Britain.

By April 1944, the ministry's [[RAF Intelligence|air Intelligence]] branch had succeeded in its intelligence efforts regarding "[[Battle of the Beams|the beams]], [[Operation Biting|the Bruneval Raid]], [[Gibraltar (disambiguation)|the Gibraltar barrage]], [[History of radar|radar]], [[Chaff (countermeasure)|Window]], [[Norwegian heavy water sabotage|heavy water]], and the [[Night fighter#Germany|German nightfighters]]" ([[R.V. Jones]]).  Other [[World War II#Advances in technology and warfare|World War II technology and warfare]] efforts included the branch's [[V-1 and V-2 Intelligence]] activities.<ref>{{cite book |last=Jones |first=R. V. |author-link=Reginald Victor Jones |year=1978 |title=Most Secret War: British Scientific Intelligence 1939–1945 |location=London |publisher=Hamish Hamilton |isbn=0-241-89746-7 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/mostsecretwar0000jone/page/335 335, 437] |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/mostsecretwar0000jone/page/335 }}</ref>