Percy Robert Clifford Groves

Brigadier-General Percy Robert Clifford Groves, (26 May 1878 – 12 August 1959) was a senior British air strategist who served in the British Army and the Royal Air Force (RAF). He campaigned for substantial reform of Britain's approach to air strategy following the First World War, in particular for an immediate expansion of the RAF to parity with the largest European force within striking distance. He was an advocate of the aerial "knock out blow": the possibility of ending a war in its early stages by launching a massive attack on the enemy's centres of gravity.

Early life Percy Robert Clifford Groves was born on 26 May 1878 at Rai Bareli, India. He was the eldest son of Joseph Groves who served as Commissioner of Railways for the United Provinces in India. He was educated at Bedford Modern School.

Career Groves joined the King's Shropshire Light Infantry where he was commissioned a second lieutenant on 18 October 1899. He served with the 2nd battalion of his regiment in the Second Boer War, The war in South Africa ended in May 1902, and he returned home later that year, on the in December 1902. He was employed with the West African Regiment (1903–04) and was Territorial Adjutant (1909–12). In terms of his military thinking, Groves was a proponent of the aerial "knock out blow": the possibility of ending a war in its early stages by launching a massive attack on the enemy's centres of gravity.

Selected works Flying over Egypt, Sinai and Palestine, National Geographic, 1926 Behind the Smoke Screen, 1934 Our Future In The Air, 1935