He was unsuccessful in fending off a hostile takeover of British Aluminum by Sir Ivan Stedeford's Tube Investments, in what was known as the "Aluminium War".

[1] His younger brother Admiral Sir Reginald Portal (1894–1983) joined the Royal Navy and also had a distinguished career.

[1] Portal had intended to become a barrister but he did not finish his degree and he left undergraduate life to enlist as a private soldier in 1914.

[3] At the beginning of the First World War, Portal joined the British Army and served as a dispatch rider in the motorcycle section of the Royal Engineers on the Western Front.

He has done excellent artillery work in the air, often in bad weather and at low altitudes; he has always set his flight the best of examples.

During a period of four months, chiefly under adverse weather conditions, he repeatedly carried out successful raids by day and night, his ingenuity and daring enabling him to drop many tons of bombs on important enemy posts.

[10]In August 1919 Portal was appointed to a permanent commission in the Royal Air Force in the rank of major (shortly afterwards redesignated as a squadron leader).

[4] Promoted to wing commander on 1 July 1925,[12] he attended the senior officers' war course at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, in 1926 before taking over No.

[4] Promoted to group captain on 1 July 1931,[13] he was appointed commander of British forces in Aden in February 1934,[4] in which role he tried to control the local tribesmen by use of an air blockade.

[20] In August 1941 he received a report on the relative inefficiency of RAF daytime raids and proposals for area bombing by night: to implement the proposals he determined that a new leader was required and replaced the chief of bomber command, Air Chief Marshal Richard Peirse, with Arthur Harris.

[1] The forces were transferred to U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower for the duration of Operation Overlord;[1] but when their control reverted to the Combined Chiefs, Portal still advocated area bombing of German cities instead of specific targets, such as Axis oil production facilities.

[26] In early 1944, Portal's view of strategic bombing changed; he felt that bombers could also play a more auxiliary role in the allied offensive.

Portal thought that the resulting damage to the German war effort and civilian morale would lead to victory within six months.

[25] In March 1945, Churchill gave the final order to stop Portal's strategy of area bombing, after the firestorm of Dresden a few weeks earlier.

[28] On 8 February 1946 he was further honoured when he was made Viscount Portal of Hungerford, in the County of Berkshire, with normal remainder to his heirs male.

[30] He was also awarded the American Distinguished Service Medal on 15 March 1946[31] and appointed a Knight Grand Cross of the Dutch Order of Orange-Nassau on 18 November 1947.

"[35] He attended the funeral of King George VI in February 1952[36] and the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in June 1953.

along with its ally Reynolds Metals of the US, won the takeover battle, and in the process, rewrote the way the city of London conducted its business in relation to shareholders and investors.