Case Studies in the Achievement of Air Superiority - Air Force ...

BATTLE OF BRITAIN
fighter’s primary duty was to shoot down bombers. Since the bombers
could not rise above 43,000 feet because of the thinness of the air, only a
few fighters, provided with exhaust-driven turbo-superchargers to achieve
that height or more, were needed. Fighter Command suffered badly when
enemy planes began to operate at such high altitudes that standing patrols
were required in order for the RAF machines to get up high enough to meet
them. If pilots were to be effective, the very high-altitude work required
more attention than heretofore to the cockpit environment. The problem
was that drafts from sloppily fitting canopies, lack of seals and insulation
as well as the absence of electrically heated gloves, suits, and boots were
all matters that became urgent as heights increased and winter arrived.
(Some of these were things that had been known and ignored since the First
World War. Others were a consequence of the rapid strides taken by the
new technology, since modern aircraft had reached the squadrons starting
only in the summer of 1938.) Another example of the problem was the major
handicap caused by the lack of VHF (very high frequency) radio sets
fitted in Fighter Command aircraft during the battle. The switch from conventional
sets had started a year before, but slow production had created
shortages, and thus only limited frequencies were available. As a result,
transmissions could be both garbled or, as happened to the Poles on September
6, intercepted and false orders given.”
Dowding was not convinced that a new organization of squadrons into
pairs and fours instead of flights of three aircraft was desirable, in part
because this would disrupt long-established accommodations. It seems
that his mind at times bogged down in tradition just as much as did others.
On gunnery, he believed that harmonizing the guns at 250 yards worked
best. Dowding thought the armament of the RAF was not one of its strongest
points: rather than relying on the Army, the RAF should produce its
own armament. Thus, it would neither be shackled to using the .303-inch
machine-gun because there was plenty of ammunition for it nor would it be
saddled with 20-mm guns that did not work in the air, both of which had
been frustrations during the battle.
The political, as much as the military, aftermath of the victory must not
be overlooked, for human nature was involved. Dowding and Park had
shown that a defensive battle could be won, and they had become popular
heroes as had the young flyers of Fighter Command. But when the Air
Ministry published in the spring of 1941 what proved to be one of the first
million-copy best-selling paperbacks in the world, it never mentioned any
of the commanders by name. After reading The Bmttle ofsritmin, Churchill
told the Air Ministry that it was admirable, but he protested to the Secretary
of State for Air, his former adjutant in France in World War I, that the
“jealousies and cliquism which have led to committing this offence are a
discredit to the Air Ministry. . . [as ifl the Admiralty had told the tale of
Trafalgar and left Lord Nelson out of it!”’?
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