role, leapfrogging several more senior officers including Bostock, now an air vice-marshal and Deputy Chief of the Air Staff. Bostock, described in the official history of the pre-war RAAF as "among the Air Force's best brains" at the time, considered himself the leading candidate for the position, and so did Jones. A suggestion arose that Jones' selection was a mistake, based on the government's reading of an organisation chart that implied he was the RAAF's most senior officer after Bostock, when in fact he was ranked six places below. Other potential appointees had included Air Marshal Richard Williams and Air Vice-Marshal Peter Drummond, but Williams had been out of favour since his dismissal from the position of CAS in the wake of the Ellington Report criticising RAAF flying safety in 1939 and Drummond was not released from his position as Deputy Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief RAF Middle East. Bostock was the first choice of the incumbent CAS, Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Burnett, but the latter's ill-concealed contempt for John Curtin's Federal Labor government helped ensure that his preference was ignored. Although he admitted to being "stunned" by the decision, Jones himself had the ambition and a reasonable expectation of becoming CAS at some point in his career; it simply happened "much sooner than I anticipated". Jones had proved his organisational abilities directing EATS, and believed that this was a significant factor in his appointment. His working class origin has also been cited as contributing to his suitability to a Labor government. Divided command Passed over as CAS, Bostock subsequently became Air Officer Commanding (AOC) RAAF Command, which placed him in charge of Australian air operations in the Pacific. Jones' role, in contrast, was primarily administrative, that of "raising, training and maintaining" the service. Though the CAS was de jure head of the RAAF, Jones' new rank of air vice-marshal was the same as Bostock's. In the words of Air Force historian Alan Stephens, "Jones was the head of his service, but he was neither unambiguously its senior officer, nor presiding over a unified command ... The system of divided command... was not an ideal arrangement, but with men of goodwill it could have worked. Regrettably Bostock and Jones were not of that mind..." Friction between the two senior officers over the command structure rapidly deteriorated into what the official history of the RAAF in World War II described as a