wing commander on 18 August 1915 and sent to command the Fifth Wing in Egypt in November 1916. He was promoted to brevet lieutenant colonel on 3 June 1916. In July 1916, Salmond was promoted to temporary brigadier general and given command of the RFC in the Middle East. The Distinguished Service Order was conferred on him on 3 March 1917: The action referred to was during the operations in Sinai at the end of 1916. In this command he was responsible for providing air cooperation for General Jan Smuts's force in East Africa, for the forces in Salonika and Mesopotamia, for Allenby's conquest of Palestine, and for the RFC in India. He was promoted to the substantive rank of lieutenant colonel on 3 September 1918. While holding the command of the Middle East, he had laid out an airway from Cairo to South Africa, clearing a chain of aerodromes in Central Africa. His idea was to send a demonstration flight or flights of RAF aircraft across Africa, thus providing the link of which Cecil Rhodes had dreamed in a Cape-to-Cairo railway. Salmond contemplated flights by both landplane and flying-boat. He was not destined to put his idea into execution, though his airway was used by Sir Pierre van Ryneveld and Sir Christopher Brand on their first flight to South Africa. In 1918, he flew the route from Cairo to Delhi in under two days. He was appointed a Grand Officer of the Egyptian Order of the Nile on 9 November 1918, a Companion of the Order of the Bath in the 1919 New Year Honours, and a Grand Commander of the Greek Order of the Redeemer on 5 April 1919. He was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George on 3 June 1919 and mentioned in despatches on account of his services in the Middle East on 28 June 1919. Royal Air Force service Salmond was awarded a permanent commission in the Royal Air Force as a major general in August 1919 (shortly afterwards redesignated as an air vice marshal). On 23 February 1922 Salmond returned to Great Britain to take up the post of Director-General of Supply and Research at the Air Ministry. The following year, his post was renamed Air Member for Supply and Research and he remained as the head of Supply and Research for the RAF until late 1926.