The Royal Air Force was formed as a separate Service, independent of the British Army and Royal Navy – the first time that any country had formed an entirely separate and independent air force. The new Service had its own ministry under a secretary of state for air. The 'new' RAF was the most powerful air force in the world with more than 290,000 personnel and nearly 23,000 aircraft, and fought effectively from April 1 1918 over the Western Front in support of ground forces. General Jan Christian Smuts said of Air Power: 'There is absolutely no limit to the scale of its future independent war use.'