The Battle of Britain Five Months That Changed History, May—October 1940 by James Holland (z-lib.org).epub

Royal Flying Corps to gain his wings. Returning to the artillery he was
nonetheless obliged to transfer permanently to the RFC upon the outbreak
of war in 1914. He rose to become commander of 16 Squadron but clashed
with General ‘Boom’ Trenchard, then head of the RFC and later the father
of the Royal Air Force, as it became in April 1918. The argument was over
Dowding’s belief that pilots needed resting from non-stop combat flying.
He lost the debate and was sent back to England, his combat flying career
over.
Nor was he initially needed in Trenchard’s post-war Royal Air Force,
although Dowding’s commanding officer at the war’s end eventually
secured him a permanent commission as a Group Captain. By 1930, he was
at the Air Ministry as Air Member for Supply and Research, and less than
five years later he was given further responsibilities as Air Member for
Research and Development. Both jobs had placed Dowding at the heart of
development and expansion of Britain’s fighter and bomber forces and also
the country’s air defences that began in 1934. During his time as head of
research and development, Dowding oversaw the introduction of the
Hurricane and Spitfire and of the Stirling four-engine heavy bomber, and
the development of radar. Admittedly, under his tenure, hopeless combat
aircraft such as the Battle and rear-armed Defiant had also seen the light of
day; yet there is no question that he got much more right than he got wrong.
Dowding was a deeply intelligent, quietly spoken, rather stiff
individual; this somewhat brusque and outwardly cold demeanour led to his
being given the nickname ‘Stuffy’. Yet he was not really stuffy at all
because that suggests he was both conventional and narrow-minded, and he
was neither. Rather, he was forward-thinking, deeply pragmatic and full of
sound common sense. During the First World War, for example, he was one
of the first people to advocate the use of radio communication in aircraft. In
the early 1930s, Dowding was advised that biplanes were preferable
because two pairs of wings provided greater lift and strength than one.
Dowding replied by asking why, in that case, a monoplane had won the
internationally coveted Schneider Trophy air speed contest. He had
recognized, when many others had not, that speed was of the essence for
fighter aircraft.
And although his detractors thought him stubborn and overly prickly, he
would have argued that he simply knew his own mind. While others went
along with the widely held belief that the bomber would always get