The non-French language historiography on the interwar French air force is quite thin. Anthony Christopher Cain's The Forgotten Air Force: French Air Doctrine in the 1930s is one of the exceptions and he examines the futile quest of the Armée de l'air to find a jack of all trades aircraft type. Robin Higham's Two Roads to War: The French and British Air Arms from Versailles to Dunkirk also covers the same ground in terms of failed French experiments. One of the Achilles' heels Higham points out is the inability of the French aviation industry to deliver powerplants of suitable power and numbers. State Capitalism and Working-Class Radicalism in the French Aircraft Industry by Herrick Chapman delves into the fractious aviation industry. Farris Kirkland's various articles on the French air force are a bit unusual in that instead of focusing on technical or political causes for defeat, Kirkland instead zooms in on psychosocial explanations. James Corum's "Airpower Thought in Continental Europe between the Wars," in the anthology The Paths of Heaven: The Evolution of Airpower Theory is a useful comparative analysis, as are other entries in this volume. Pascal Vennesson's article "Institution and airpower: The making of the French air force" in the Journal of Strategic Studies is another view of the formation of the service.

The historiography RAF faces an inverse challenge than Armée de l'air in that there is a enormous amount of material, and much of the work is of variable quality. John Ferris's " Review Article: The Air Force Brats' View of History: Recent Writing and the Royal Air Force, 1918-1960," is a good introduction to the broader historiography and various issues that plague it. British Air Policy between the Wars: 1918-1939 by H. Montgomery Hyde covers a lot of the squabbles, albeit in isolation compared to other air arms, and has a few errors of fact, but does plow through the major controversies. British Air Strategy between the Wars by Malcolm Smith covers much the same ground, but more succinctly. Allan D. English's article "The RAF Staff College and the Evolution of British Strategic Bombing Policy, 1922–1929," in Journal of Strategic Studies examines the importance of the Staff College in the formation of policy. Both Michael Paris's Winged Warfare: The Literature and Theory of Aerial Warfare in Britain and Alfred Gollin's The Impact of Air Power on the British People and Their Government parse out the impact of the popular imagination on both the emerging service and the government. Likewise, The Next War in the Air: Britain’s Fear of the Bomber, 1908-1941 by Brett Holman explores how factors like fear played out in the direction of policy. Sebastian Ritchie's Industry and Air Power: The Expansion of British Military Aircraft Production, 1935-1941 is exactly what it says on the tin.