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

two tin legs had still returned to flying. He had incredible energy,
determination and drive and his courage was unquestionably an inspiration.
But he was also something of a bully with an ego almost as big as Leigh-
Mallory’s. Bader was delightful and charming and enormous fun just so
long as he was the boss, and people played by his rules and accepted that he
was right at all times; in some ways, he was cut from the same cloth as
Dolfo Galland.
Bader’s big-wing idea was that as soon as a large raid was seen to be
building up, he would form up a wing of three to five squadrons to intercept
the enemy as they crossed over the Channel. 11 Group fighters would then
harry the departing raiders as they headed back to home. This tactic would
have given the big wing the primary role rather than 11 Group’s fighters,
which is exactly how Bader wanted it; like Leigh-Mallory he was frustrated
at being kept out of the action. Unfortunately, his ego was getting in the
way of sound tactical sense.
As the Duxford Wing was finally put into practice, Bader and Leigh-
Mallory repeatedly put in monstrous claims, gleefully picked up at the Air
Ministry, which did much to curry support for their new ideas. Park,
however, found both Leigh-Mallory and Bader irksome in the extreme. The
big wing was taking too long to form up, frequently missing the action, and
by following this wasteful enterprise they were not properly protecting 11
Group airfields, which was their primary function. The claims, Park said,
were absolutely risible. He also knew that there was no way the big wing
could meet a large German raid as it crossed the coast, as Leigh-Mallory
and Bader were proposing. Duxford was much further away from
Canterbury, for example, than Cap Gris Nez. At the very least it would take
half an hour from the moment a raid was picked up over the Pas de Calais
to reach south-east Kent, and that was not even taking into account
forming-up time. The Germans would take just fifteen minutes.
Park’s appreciation of the big-wing theory was spot on. Bader’s men
were massively overclaiming. Even Cocky Dundas, who had been quite
awed by Bader during 616 Squadron’s brief stint with the wing, had
admitted that he had not seen anyone actually shoot anything down during
the big air battle on 27 September; and that was the only time they had ever
properly engaged the enemy at all while he was involved. So absurd were
these inflated notions about big wings, Park had assumed he could dismiss
them with a few withering explanatory comments. But he was wrong.