vice-marshals in January 1945. Jones sent a signal to Bostock complaining of the latter's "insubordinate tone" and "repeated attempts to usurp authority of this Headquarters". Bostock replied that as AOC RAAF Command he was "responsible to Commander, Allied Air Forces, and not, repeat not, subordinate to you", and that he would "continue to take the strongest exception to your unwarranted and uninformed interference". Despite such acrimony, the command structure remained unchanged for the rest of the war. Responsible as CAS for building up Australia's air combat assets, in 1943 Jones had given an assurance to the Australian government that he could maintain a force of 73 squadrons, despite Kenney's prediction that even the RAAF's then-currently approved strength of 45 squadrons was beyond its capacity. In any event, by the end of the war Jones had expanded the RAAF to 70 squadrons in the Pacific and Europe, including several heavy bomber units. One of his most controversial decisions of the war was during the invasion of Tarakan in May 1945 when he grounded Australian B-24 Liberator squadrons scheduled to take part in the attack, due to their crews having exceeded their monthly quota of flying hours. Bostock was not consulted, and said that he would have thankfully "fallen through a crack in the boards on the deck" as he watched the attacking formations from a U.S. warship, minus the expected RAAF aircraft. Kenney sympathised with him; he once commented in his diary that "Jones and Bostock ... fight each other harder than the Japs". "Morotai Mutiny" Towards the end of the war Jones intervened in the so-called "Morotai Mutiny", when senior pilots in the Australian First Tactical Air Force (No. 1 TAF) proffered their resignations rather than carry on attacking what they saw as unimportant targets. Jones personally interviewed all but one of the officers involved, later declaring, "I believed them all to be sincere in what they were stating and what they had attempted to do ... Yes, sincerely held beliefs, no matter how ill-founded, coupled possibly with a rather exaggerated sense of national duty." Kenney also insisted on speaking to the pilots himself, overriding Jones' protestations that it was an internal RAAF matter, and threatened to appear on behalf of the pilots should they be court-martialled. Jones sacked Cobby, the Air Officer Commanding No. 1 TAF, along with two of Cobby's staff. In what may have been a reaction