Marshal of the Royal Air Force Charles Frederick Algernon Portal, 1st Viscount Portal of Hungerford KG GCB OM DSO & Bar MC (21 May 1893 – 22 April 1971) was a senior Royal Air Force officer and an advocate of strategic bombing. He was the British Chief of the Air Staff during most of the Second World War.
Charles Portal was born 21 May 1893 at Eddington House, in Hungerford, England, the son of Edward Robert Portal and his wife Ellinor Kate (née ...
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Marshal of the Royal Air Force Charles Frederick Algernon Portal, 1st Viscount Portal of Hungerford KG GCB OM DSO & Bar MC (21 May 1893 – 22 April 1971) was a senior Royal Air Force officer and an advocate of strategic bombing. He was the British Chief of the Air Staff during most of the Second World War.
Charles Portal was born 21 May 1893 at Eddington House, in Hungerford, England, the son of Edward Robert Portal and his wife Ellinor Kate (née Hill). The Portals had Huguenot origins, having arrived in England in the 17th century. Charles Portal, or "Peter" as he was nicknamed, was educated at Winchester College and Christ Church, Oxford where he read law. 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.
At the beginning of 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. Portal was made a...
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