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Robert Brooke-Popham

Air Chief Marshal Sir Henry Robert Moore Brooke-Popham, (18 September 1878 – 20 October 1953) was a senior commander in the Royal Air Force. During the First World War he served in the Royal Flying Corps as a wing commander and senior staff officer. Remaining in the new Royal Air Force (RAF) after the war, Brooke-Popham was the first commandant of its Staff College at Andover and later held high command in the Middle East. He was Governor of Kenya in the late 1930s. Most notably, Brooke-Popham was Commander-in-Chief of the British Far East Command until being replaced a few weeks before Singapore fell to Japanese troops.

Family life and education
Brooke-Popham was born in England in the Suffolk village of Mendlesham on 18 September 1878. His parents were Henry Brooke, a country gentleman of Wetheringsett Manor in Suffolk, and his wife Dulcibella who was the daughter of Robert Moore, a clergyman.

Brooke-Popham's education was not atypical of a man entering the British officer class. He attended South Lodge School in Lowestoft from 1885 to 1891. After his school years at Haileybury and his officer training at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, he was commissioned into the British Army in 1898. In January 1926, Brooke-Popham married Opal Mary, the daughter of Edgar Hugonin. They later had a son and a daughter.

Early military career
After graduating from Sandhurst in May 1898, Brooke-Popham was gazetted to the Oxfordshire Light Infantry in the rank of second lieutenant, and the following year promoted to lieutenant on 24 November 1899. As a subaltern he saw active service in the Second Boer War during 1899 and 1900 and on 26 April 1902 he was seconded for further duty in South Africa.

During his time there he served in the Orange Free State, the Transvaal, the Orange River Colony, and Cape Colony. He was promoted captain on 9 November 1904. By 1910 Brooke-Popham had returned to Great Britain. From 22 January 1910, he attended the Army Staff College at Camberley.

Military aviation before the First World War
Brooke-Popham was attached to Air Battalion Royal Engineers during its manoeuvres of 1911, after which he decided to learn to fly. He attended the flying school at Brooklands and gained Royal Aero Club certificate number 108 in July 1911. He returned to his regiment, the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, on 28 February 1912.

However, in early 1912, he transferred to the Air Battalion, taking up duties as a pilot in March. The next month, he was appointed Officer Commanding of the Battalion's Aeroplane Company.

With the creation of the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) from the Air Battalion on 13 May 1912, Brooke-Popham was transferred to the RFC. He was appointed the first Officer Commanding of No. 3 Squadron. In a letter to the editor of Flight magazine, dated 23 January 1949, he wrote, "I see from an old log book that though I was seconded to the Air Battalion at the end of March 1912, it was not till the 6th May that I flew to Larkhill to take over command of No.2 (Aeroplane) Co." No. 3 Squadron was the successor unit to the Air Battalion's No. 2 (Aeroplane) Company which had been stationed at Larkhill, on Salisbury Plain, since its creation in April 1911 and thus became the oldest British, Empire or Commonwealth independent military unit to operate heavier-than-air machines.

First World War
Following the outbreak of the First World War, Brooke-Popham went to France as the Deputy Assistant Adjutant and Quartermaster-General in the headquarters of the Royal Flying Corps, where he was responsible for the administrative and technical support to the squadrons deployed in the field. His understanding of the importance of air power and its support to land forces led him to criticize the lack of adequate air support to the British Expeditionary Force.

On 20 November 1914 Brooke-Popham was appointed Officer Commanding No. 3 Wing of the RFC. At this time the wing consisted of No. 1 and No. 4 squadrons, and on the same day as his appointment, Brooke-Popham received a temporary promotion to lieutenant colonel.

During the Battle of Neuve Chapelle, Brooke-Popham directed his Wing's operations and was later awarded the Distinguished Service Order for his part in the Battle.

By 1915, Brooke-Popham was too senior an officer to take part in much operational flying, and he also had limited experience of air combat. Rather, his energies were directed into administrative and organizational activities, as he served in several staff posts at the RFC's headquarters in France. In May 1915 Brooke-Popham was appointed the RFC's Chief Staff Officer, and in March 1916 he was the Corps' Deputy Adjutant and Quartermaster-General, which saw him granted the temporary rank of brigadier-general.

In 1915, the capabilities of radio were still very limited. Observers in aircraft could not easily communicate with men on the ground. Men on the ground could not easily reply. In 1915, a technique was developed whereby troops on the ground could send messages to aviators by laying strips of white cloth on the ground. These strips are referred to as "Popham strips" in a novel set in the period. With the establishment of the Royal Air Force in April 1918, Brooke-Popham was transferred to the newly created Air Ministry in London. He served as the Controller of Aircraft Production for the remainder of the War and for some months afterwards. In 1919, he served as Director of Aircraft Research.

Developed during the First World War, the Popham panel was named for him.

Post-war honours
Following the end of the First World War, Brooke-Popham was decorated for his contributions to the war effort. In January 1919 he was awarded the Air Force Cross and made a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George. Later in the same year he was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath and was given a permanent commission in the Royal Air Force as a colonel. He was rapidly promoted to air commodore when the Air Force introduced its own rank system in August 1919.

Career progression
From 1919 to 1921, Brooke-Popham served as Director of Research at the Air Ministry and in November 1921 he was tasked with establishing the RAF Staff College at Andover and he became its first commandant on 1 April 1922.

In 1925 the Air Defence of Great Britain had been created and it was charged with defending the United Kingdom from aerial attack. The following year, Brooke-Popham was posted as Air Officer Commanding (AOC) the Fighting Area within the Air Defence of Great Britain and he served in this capacity for the next two years. During his time as AOC Fighting Area, Brooke-Popham oversaw the establishment of a chain of huge concrete mirrors which were designed for acoustic early warning and he received a knighthood in 1927.

On 1 November 1928, Brooke-Popham was appointed AOC Iraq Command. This high-profile position put him in charge of all British forces in Iraq and, when the post of high commissioner was vacant, he acted in that capacity as well. In late 1928, he mobilised and despatched the Victoria aircraft for the rescue of British embassy staff and others in the Kabul evacuation by air operation.

The start of 1931 saw Brooke-Popham promoted to air marshal and then posted as the first RAF officer to serve as Commandant of the Imperial Defence College. Two years later in 1933, he returned to the Air Defence of Great Britain, this time in the senior post of Air Officer Commander-in-Chief. Later that year Brooke-Popham received the honorary appointment of Principal Aide-de-Camp to the King. In 1935 he left the Air Defence of Great Britain to become the Inspector-General of the RAF. This was, however, a short-lived appointment and he was posted later that year.

Commander-in-Chief RAF Middle East
In late 1935, Brooke-Popham took up the post of Air Officer Commander-in-Chief RAF Middle East with his headquarters in Cairo. His appointment took place not long after the outbreak of the Second Italo-Abyssinian War in October 1935 and his principal aim was to deter the Regia Aeronautica from attacking British territory in north east Africa. In 1937, Brooke-Popham relinquished his command and returned to Great Britain, retiring from the RAF on 6 March.

Private life
In Q2 1926 in Tadcaster, he married Opal Mary Hugonin (16 Oct 1900 - Q2 1983). They had two children, Diana M in Q4 1926 in Marylebone and Francis P in Q3 1928 in Uxbridge.

In Q1 1948 in Westminster Diana married Robert H H Barton, and they had Margaret H, born Q4 1948 in Ploughley, Francis C H born Q3 1951 in Halstead, and Joanna M H, born Q4 1953 in Oxford.

In Q1 1957 in Greenwich, Francis married Susan C Fry; they had three daughters, Jane E in Q1 1960 in Gosport, Catherine A in Q1 1962 in Portsmouth and MARY L in Q3 1964 in Islington. In 1986 in Taunton, he married Diana J Michael.

Governor of Kenya
Following Italy's occupation of Ethiopia, the British Government wanted a military man to hold the post of Governor of Kenya. Brooke-Popham was appointed Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Kenya in 1937 and his military expertise was useful in helping the colony prepare for a possible war with Italy. Under his direction, a plan was devised which concentrated defensive resources on the strategically important port of Mombasa, which was judged to be the most likely Italian target. Although this left Nairobi and the highlands with only limited defences, the barren regions of northern Kenya meant that the inland settlements were geographically protected from the Italian threat further to the north. Eventually, as the Italian occupation of Ethiopia was characterized by strife and unrest, the threat to Kenya dissipated.

Brooke-Popham's governorship was also marked by improved relations with the settlers. His predecessor had sought to dominate the political and economic life of the colony which had aroused repeated opposition from some of the settlers' leaders. However, in courting settler opinion, some historians have criticized Brooke-Popham for failing to deal with those settlers who wanted to limit African and Asian freedoms in Kenya.

In 1939 on the outbreak of the Second World War, Brooke-Popham ordered the internment of all Germans in Kenya, directed that all aircraft be commandeered, and devised a plan to keep the colony's farms running. On 30 September 1939 he relinquished the governorship and returned to Britain.

Commonwealth Air Training Plan
Brooke-Popham rejoined the RAF shortly after his return to Great Britain and only weeks after the outbreak of the Second World War. He was first appointed as head of the RAF's training mission to Canada where he worked on the establishment of the Commonwealth Air Training Plan. In 1940 Brooke-Popham was made head of the training mission to South Africa where he continued work on the Plan.

Command arrangements
On 18 November 1940, at the age of 62, Brooke-Popham was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the British Far East Command making him responsible for defence matters in Singapore, Malaya, Burma and Hong Kong. This was a considerably more demanding undertaking than any of Brooke-Popham's many previous appointments. The Command was new and Brooke-Popham was the first RAF officer to be appointed Commander-in-Chief of a joint command during a world war.

There was a significant gap between the Commander-in-Chief's responsibility and his authority, as Brooke-Popham was nominally responsible for all defence matters in the British Far East colonies but the Royal Navy units in these waters did not come under his command; rather they reported to their own naval commander-in-chief in London. The civil servants in the Far East also did not report to the Commander-in-Chief, working instead for ministers in London.

Insufficient defences
With the Japanese threatening south-east Asia, Brooke-Popham knew he had to build up the defences of the region. Those defences which already existed were primarily directed towards an attack from the sea and everywhere sufficient forces were lacking. The Command's aerial defences were particularly deficient and the priority attached to operations in the Middle East meant that British resources were directed elsewhere. During the following year, Brooke-Popham struggled without much success to build up defences, get the much-needed reinforcements and rectify the unsound command arrangements.

Operation Matador
In August 1941 Brooke-Popham submitted a plan for the defence of Malaya to London for approval. This plan, code-named Matador, worked on the basis that the Japanese would land on the east coast of Thailand and then advance south. The essence of Operation Matador was that Allied forces would advance into Thailand and fight the Japanese there. The plan relied upon force levels not available to Brooke-Popham and involved violating the neutrality of Thailand, with whom a non-aggression pact had been signed the previous year. Concern regarding the situation prompted the government in London to send Duff Cooper as a special cabinet envoy. Cooper's arrival in September 1941, did not help to maintain Brooke-Popham's authority in a difficult situation.

On 22 November, with the Japanese establishing sea and air bases in southern Indo-China, Brooke-Popham urged London that Matador should be put into effect, granting him permission to advance into southern Thailand. Brooke-Popham did eventually receive permission on 5 December although many conditions were attached. The plan was reworked to take account of the limited forces available and on 8 December the war with Japan began. Two days before the Malayan Campaign began, Hudsons of No.1 Squadron (RAAF) spotted the Japanese invasion fleet but given uncertainty about the ships' destination and instructions to avoid offensive operations until attacks were made against friendly territory, Brooke-Popham did not allow the convoy to be bombed.

Although it had been agreed in London that Brooke-Popham should be replaced as commander-in-chief on 1 November 1941, the change was not made because of the critical situation. With the war with Japan now unfolding, many believed that Brooke-Popham was near to a nervous collapse. The cabinet envoy Duff Cooper urged his replacement and London agreed. On 27 December, at the height of the Battle of Malaya, Brooke-Popham handed over command to Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Pownall. Brooke-Popham's return to Britain was closely followed by the fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942. Inevitably, Brooke-Popham was associated with the collapse and he was publicly attacked by some in Britain as the man chiefly responsible for the defeat.

Later war years
In May 1942, Brooke-Popham retired from active service in the RAF for the second time. His reputation severely damaged by the events in the Far East, he nevertheless continued to serve where he could. At some stage in 1942, Brooke-Popham became Inspector-General of the Air Training Corps, a position he held until 1945. From 1944 to 1946, he served as President of the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes Council.

Later years
After Brooke-Popham relinquished his role as President of the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes Council, he lived in retirement. Brooke-Popham died in the hospital at RAF Halton in Buckinghamshire on 20 October 1953. His funeral took place at St. Edburg's Church in Bicester and he was buried privately in Somerset.

Papers
Papers relating to Brooke-Popham's service are held in the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives at King's College London.

title: Robert Brooke-Popham


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Alexine Tinne

Alexandrine "Alexine" Pieternella Françoise Tinne (17 October 1835 – 1 August 1869) was a Dutch explorer in Africa who was the first European woman to attempt to cross the Sahara. She was an early photographer.

Early life
Alexine Tinne was the daughter of Philip Frederik Tinne and his second wife, Baroness Henriette van Capellen. Philip Tinne was a Dutch merchant, who was heavily involved in the transatlantic spice trade. He worked at coffee plantations in Demerara (a Dutch and then British colony in modern Guyana). In 1813, Philip Tinne became a full partner in the Liverpool firm Sandbach, Tinne & Company, a firm which from 1782 until the 1920s, owned ships and plantations, engaging in both slavery and the transport of slaves and sugar. Philip Tinne settled in England during the Napoleonic Wars and later returned to his native land, marrying Henriette, daughter of a Dutch Vice-Admiral, Theodorus Frederik van Capellen, and Petronella de Lange, a lady-in-waiting to Queen Sofia. Alexine was born when Philip was sixty-three.

Tinne was tutored at home and showed proficiency at painting, piano, languages, photography and geography. Her father died when she was ten years old. The immense wealth of her father, much of which was amassed due to his activities in the spice and sugar trade (when slavery was abolished in 1833, his company was awarded £150,452, the second-largest payment made to any mercantile concern  ), resulted in the young girl becoming the richest female in the Netherlands.

Tinne started experimenting with photography in her home town of The Hague and its harbour Scheveningen. She worked with several commercial photographers: Robert Jefferson Bingham (who visited The Hague), Francis Frith (whom she met in Egypt) and the J. Geiser photostudio in Algiers.

Africa
Accompanied by her mother Harriette and her aunt, Tinne left Europe in the summer of 1861 for the White Nile region. After a short stay at Khartoum, the party traveled up the White Nile and became the first European women to reach Gondokoro. She fell ill and they were forced to return, reaching Khartoum on 20 November. Directly after their return, Theodor von Heuglin and Hermann Steudner met the Tinnes and the four of them planned to travel to the Bahr-el-Ghazal, a tributary of the White Nile, to reach the countries of the 'Niam-Niam' (Azande). Heuglin and Steudner left Khartoum on 25 January, ahead of the rest of the expedition; the Tinnes following on 5 February. Heuglin also had geographical exploration in mind, intending to explore the uncharted region beyond the river and to ascertain how far westward the Nile basin extended. He also intended to investigate the reports of a vast lake in Central Africa eastwards of those already known, most likely the lake-like expanses of the middle Congo.

Ascending the Bahr-el-Ghazal, the limit of navigation was reached on 10 March. From Mishra-er-Rek, a journey was made overland, across the Bahr Jur and south-west by the Bahr Kosango to Jebel Kosango, on the borders of the Niam-Niam country. During the journey, all of the travellers suffered severely from fever. A student died in April and Tinne's mother in July, followed by two Dutch maids. After much travel and dangers, the remainder of the party reached Khartoum at the end of March 1864, when Tinne's aunt, who had stayed in Khartoum, died. Tinne buried her aunt and one maid and brought the corpse of her mother and the other maid back to Cairo. John Tinne, her half-brother from Liverpool, visited in January–February 1865, with the intention of persuading her to return home with him. Tinne was not to be persuaded and John left with the two corpses and a large part of her ethnographic collection. Her mother's body later was buried at the Oud Eik en Duinen Cemetery in The Hague. Tinne's ethnographic collection was donated by John to the Public Museum (now the Liverpool World Museum).

Tinne successfully photographed during her 1862–1864 trip up the Nile and in the Bahr-el-Ghazal region, making her the author of the first known views of Gondokoro (1862), as well as of inhabitants of the areas explored. The extreme rarity of these photographs led them to be used as models for engravings illustrating several articles and books on these regions in the 1860s and 1870s.

Her botanical collections were described in a book entitled Plantae Tinneanae. It included the description of the new genus Blastania. Crinum tinneanum Kotschy & Peyr. [Amaryllidaceae; present name Ammocharis tinneana (Kotschy & Peyr.) Milne-Redh. & Schweick ] was named in her honour.

At Cairo, Tinne lived in Oriental style during the next four years, visiting Algeria, Tunisia, and other parts of the Mediterranean. An attempt to reach the Touaregs in 1868 from Algiers failed.

Sahara and death
In January 1869, Tinne again made an attempt to reach the Touaregs. She started from Tripoli with a caravan, with the intention of traveling to Lake Chad, followed by Wadai, Darfur and Kordofan before reaching the upper Nile. In Murzuq, she met the German explorer Gustav Nachtigal, with whom she intended to cross the desert. As Nachtigal wanted to go to the Tibesti Mountains first, she set out for the South on her own. Her caravan advanced slowly. Due to her diseases (attacks of gout and inflammation of her eyes), she was not able to maintain order in her group.

In the early morning of 1 August, on the route from Murzuk to Ghat, she was murdered together with two Dutch sailors in her party, allegedly by Tuareg people in league with her escort. According to statements at the trial in Tripoli in December 1869–January 1870, two blows of a sword — one in her neck, one on one of her hands — made her collapse. They left her to bleed to death.

There are several theories as to the motive, none of them proven. One is that her guides believed that her iron water tanks were filled with gold. It is also possible that her death came as a result of an internal political conflict between local Tuareg chiefs. Another explorer, Erwin von Bary, who visited the same area in the 1870s, met participants of the assault and learned that it had been a blow against the "great old man" of the Northern Tuaregs, Ikhenukhen, who was to be removed from his powerful position, and the means was to be the killing of the Christians — just to prove that Ikhenukhen was too weak to protect travelers. Given the internal strife among the Northern Tuareg that lasted until the Ottoman occupation of the Fezzan Province (Southern Libya), this version is the most probable explanation of the otherwise unmotivated massacre.

Legacy
It was believed that Tinne's collections of ethnographic specimens in Liverpool were destroyed in 1941 during a bombing raid. The church built in her memory in The Hague was similarly destroyed. Recent research revealed however that around 75% (over 100 objects) of her ethnographic collection survived the air raid. Besides their value as a document of her two Sudan journeys, her collection, together with the contemporary one of Heuglin at Stuttgart (the Linden Museum), represent rare specimens of an early date belonging to material cultures in Sudan.

A small marker near Juba in Sudan commemorating the Nile explorers of the 19th century bears Tinne's name, as well as a window plaque in Tangiers. Many of her remaining papers, including most of her letters from Africa, are stored at the National Archive in The Hague. Her photographs are at the National Archive and the Municipal Archive of The Hague.

In 2024 Leiden University Library acquired eighteen photos made by Tinne in 1862 in Nubia and Sudan, including in the village of Gondokoro. These are among the earliest images taken in the heart of the African continent.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Alexine Tinne


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