Slessor went on to serve in the RAF's most senior post, Chief of the Air Staff, in the early 1950s, and was considered a strong proponent of strategic bombing and the nuclear deterrent.

[1] Lame in both legs as a result of polio, he was rejected for army service in 1914 and received a commission as a second lieutenant in the Royal Flying Corps on 6 July 1915 only with the help of family connections.

[1][14] Having left the RAF as a flight lieutenant on 21 August 1919,[15] Slessor applied to rejoin and was offered a short-service commission at the same rank on 24 February 1920.

3 (Indian) Wing at Quetta in March 1935,[22] and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for operations in Waziristan between 25 November 1936 and 16 January 1937.

[24] He did, however, acknowledge the limitations of his theory, stating:[25]...the conditions envisaged throughout [this book] are those of a campaign on the land in which the primary problem at the time is the defeat of an enemy army in the field.

On 17 May 1937, following his posting to India, Slessor was promoted acting group captain,[26] and appointed deputy director of Plans at the Air Ministry.

[9] Slessor's assigned personal pilot was Flight Lieutenant Owen Phillipps DFC, an Australian from No.

[36] Appointed Commander-in-Chief Coastal Command with the acting rank of air marshal on 5 February 1943, Slessor had at his disposal sixty squadrons, two of which were equipped with B-24 Liberator heavy bombers.

[9] Promoted temporary air marshal on 1 June 1943,[38] he was advanced to Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in the 1943 Birthday Honours.

In this role he conducted operations in the Italian Campaign and Yugoslavia, establishing the Balkan Air Force in the latter theatre.

[46] He continued to serve as Air Member for Personnel, responsible for overseeing the demobilisation of the wartime RAF, until 1 October 1947.

[49] Meanwhile, Slessor was appointed a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath on 10 June 1948,[50] and became Principal Air Aide-de-Camp to the King on 1 July.

[54] As leader of the RAF, Slessor coined the term "V-Force" to denote its planned trio of strategic jet bombers—the Vickers Valiant, Handley Page Victor, and Avro Vulcan—and contributed to the decision to build all three designs.

[24][55] He played a key role in promoting nuclear weapons as an effective instrument of deterrence in early Cold War British strategy.

In 1952, the RAF argued that, because bombers were such an important deterrent, conventional forces could be drastically reduced at a time when the Government was seeking significant public expenditure savings.

[56] Slessor believed it unlikely that the United Kingdom would be able to meet a communist offensive without resorting to the use of tactical nuclear weapons.

[57] He became one of the key propagandists of the "Great Deterrent" (which he employed as the title of a book he wrote after he retired) on both sides of the Atlantic.

[63][64] His wife, Lady Hermione, was appointed a Serving Sister of the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem on 2 July 1963.