Hugh Dowding

Air Chief Marshal Hugh Caswall Tremenheere Dowding, 1st Baron Dowding (24 April 1882 – 15 February 1970) was a senior officer in the Royal Air Force. He was Air Officer Commanding RAF Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain and is generally credited with playing a crucial role in Britain's defence, and hence, the defeat of Operation Sea Lion, Adolf Hitler's plan to invade Britain.

Born in Moffat, Scotland, Dowding was an officer in the British Army in the 1900s and early 1910s. He joined the Royal Flying Corps at the start of the First World War and went on to serve as a fighter pilot and then as commanding officer of No. 16 Squadron. During the inter-war years he became Air Officer Commanding Fighting Area, Air Defence of Great Britain and then joined the Air Council as Air Member for Supply and Research. In July 1936, Dowding was appointed chief of the newly created RAF Fighter Command.

During the Battle of Britain in the Second World War, Dowding's Fighter Command successfully defended the UK against the attacks of the Luftwaffe, thanks to his prudent management of RAF resources and detailed preparation of Britain's air defences (the Dowding system). He subsequently came into conflict with proponents of the Big Wing tactic, most notably Trafford Leigh-Mallory and Douglas Bader, which along with the inadequacies of RAF's night-time defence during the Blitz led to his eventual downfall. In November 1940, Dowding was replaced in command against his wishes by Sholto Douglas, another Big Wing advocate.

After further appointments in the US and then back to the UK, Dowding retired from the Royal Air Force in July 1942, He was made a peer in June 1943. Dowding subsequently became an influential member of the British spiritualist, theosophical, and animal rights movements.

Early life

Dowding was born in Moffat, Dumfriesshire, the son of Arthur John Caswall Dowding and Maud Caroline Dowding (née Tremenheere). His father had taught at Fettes College in Edinburgh before moving to Moffat. Dowding was educated at St Ninian's School and Winchester College. He trained at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich before being commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Royal Garrison Artillery on 18 August 1900.

Military career

Promoted to lieutenant on 8 May 1902, Dowding served with the Royal Garrison Artillery at Gibraltar, in Ceylon and in Hong Kong before being posted to No. 7 Mountain Artillery Battery in India in 1904. In September 1907 he was seconded for service with the Native Mountain Artillery in India. After returning to the United Kingdom, he attended the Army Staff College 1912 before being promoted to captain on 18 August 1913 and being posted with the Royal Garrison Artillery on the Isle of Wight later that year. He then attended the Central Flying School, where he was awarded his wings. Although added to the Reserve List of the Royal Flying Corps (RFC), Dowding returned to the Isle of Wight to resume his Royal Garrison Artillery duties. However, this arrangement was short lived and in August 1914, he joined the RFC as a pilot on No. 7 Squadron. He became commanding officer of the Wireless Experimental Establishment at Brooklands in March 1915 and went on to be commanding officer of No. 16 Squadron in July 1915, After the Battle of the Somme, Dowding clashed with General Hugh Trenchard, the commander of the RFC, over the need to give pilots some rest and recuperation. In September 1915 Duncan Grinnell-Milne joined No 16 squadron as a junior pilot. Years later he published an account of his time in the squadron, in which he criticises Dowding as being "too reserved and aloof from his juniors", although efficient. Promoted to major on 30 December 1915, Dowding was recalled to England in January 1916, and, having been promoted to temporary lieutenant colonel on 1 February 1916 was given command of 7 Wing at Farnborough later that month. He transferred to the command of 9 Wing at Fienvillers in June 1916. Returning to England, he was promoted to temporary colonel on 1 January 1917 on appointment as commander of the Southern Group Command and promoted to temporary brigadier-general on 23 June 1917 before being given command of the southern training brigade in August 1917. He was sent to York as chief staff officer to the RAF's senior administrative officer in the area in April 1918. He was appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George on 1 January 1919. He commanded No. 16 Group from October 1919 and then No. 1 Group from February 1920 where he was responsible for organising two of the annual air displays at Hendon. He was promoted to air commodore on 1 January 1922, and served as chief staff officer at Inland Area headquarters at Uxbridge from February 1922 before being appointed Chief Staff Officer for RAF Iraq Command in August 1924. The dominant personality within the RAF in the 1920s was Hugh Trenchard who ardently believed in strategic bombing as a war-winning measure and as a result, the interwar RAF was dominated by a "bomber cult" as Trenchard tended to promote officers who shared his views about strategic bombing. Dowding stood out as one of the few RAF officers not totally enamoured with bombers and who was more interested in fighters.

In May 1926 Dowding was appointed director of training at the Air Ministry. He was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath on 2 January 1928 and promoted to air vice-marshal on 1 January 1929. Trenchard sent him to Palestine and Transjordan to study security problems caused by Arab–Jewish unrest: his reports, which gained Trenchard's approval, were a cause of further career advancement. Dowding became Air Officer Commanding Fighting Area, Air Defence of Great Britain in December 1929 and then joined the Air Council as Air Member for Supply and Research in September 1930. One of his first responsibilities in this post was the approval of the granting of a certificate of airworthiness to the R101 airship shortly before it set off on its ill-fated voyage to India; he later said "I think I was wrong not to insist on much more extensive trials and tests" and that his decision had been based on optimistic technical advice. Dowding's time in this office coincided with a period of rapid development in aircraft design and a growing fear that another major war was on the horizon. Although without scientific or technical training, he displayed a great capacity for understanding technical matters. He was promoted to air marshal on 1 January 1933 and advanced to Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath on 3 June 1933.

In July 1936 Dowding was appointed commanding officer of the newly created RAF Fighter Command, and was perhaps the one important person in Britain, and perhaps the world, who did not agree with British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin's 1932 declaration that "The bomber will always get through". He conceived and oversaw the development of the "Dowding system". This consisted of an integrated air defence system which included (i) radar (whose potential Dowding was among the first to appreciate), (ii) human observers (including the Royal Observer Corps), who filled crucial gaps in what radar was capable of detecting at the time (the early radar systems, for example, did not provide accurate information on the altitude of incoming German aircraft), (iii) raid plotting, and (iv) radio control of aircraft. The whole network was linked in many cases by dedicated telephone cables buried sufficiently deeply to provide protection against bombing. The network had its centre at RAF Bentley Priory, a converted country house on the outskirts of London.

A major problem for the RAF was the way that the Canadian prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King from 1935 onward repeatedly vetoed plans for the Empire Air Training Scheme for training pilots from all the Commonwealth nations in Canada, which prevented Fighter Command from building up a reserve of properly trained pilots. By the time the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan was finally launched in the autumn of 1939 after Mackenzie King gave his consent, it was far too late for Dowding. On an average, it took about one year to train a pilot plus another year of squadron flying to prepare a pilot for war. In lieu of the Empire Air Training Scheme that he wanted, Dowding was forced to depend upon the Auxiliary Air Force, the RAF Volunteer Reserve and the University Air Squadrons to provide him with a reserve of trained pilots. However, despite all the efforts to give Fighter Command a reserve of pilots, Dowding complained in 1939 that he lacked sufficient reserves of properly trained pilots to face the Luftwaffe. On the basis of the First World War experiences, Dowding predicted that many of his pilots would be rapidly killed or seriously injured in the event of war, all the more because the Luftwaffe had many combat-experienced pilots who had served in the Spanish Civil War, and it still took a year to train a pilot, leading him to warn that he would almost certainly face a shortage of pilots.

Dowding also brought modern aircraft into service during the pre-war period, including the eight gun Spitfire and Hurricane. At a meeting with the Air Ministry when told that bullet-proof windows were too expensive, Dowding replied: "If Chicago gangsters can have bulletproof glass in their cars I can't see any reason why my pilots cannot have the same". Dowding was a quiet, reserved man, but was greatly admired by those who served under him. He was promoted to air chief marshal on 1 January 1937 and appointed a Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order on 23 January 1937.

Second World War

Battle of Britain

[[File:Sir Hugh Dowding with George VI and Queen Elizabeth.jpg|thumb|right|

Queen Elizabeth and King George VI with Dowding in 1940]]

At the time of his retirement in June 1939, Dowding was asked to stay on until March 1940 because of the tense international situation. He was again permitted to continue serving through the Battle of Britain, first until July and finally until November 1940. proved unwilling to sacrifice aircraft and pilots in the attempt to aid Allied troops during the Battle of France. He, along with his immediate superior Sir Cyril Newall, then Chief of the Air Staff, resisted repeated requests from Winston Churchill to weaken the home defence by sending precious squadrons to France.

Dowding lacked tact when it came to dealing with politicians, and right from the onset he did not get along well with Churchill. The British historian Len Deighton wrote: "But Dowding was no paragon. Too often he resorted to caustic comments when a kind word of advice would have produced the same or better results...Dowding was indifferent to the boardroom politics of higher office, impatient and abrasive to men who failed to understand his reasoning". Just before a cabinet meeting on 15 May 1940, Dowding protested before an informal committee that consisted of Churchill; the minister of aircraft production, Lord Beaverbrook and the Air Minister Sir Archibald Sinclair that the number of fighter squadrons available to Fighter Command had been reduced from 52 to 36, and at present rate of losses in France, he would have no squadrons available within two weeks. Dowding attended the subsequent cabinet meeting, but did not speak. The meeting ended with the cabinet voting to send four more squadrons to France. On 16 May 1940, Churchill held a summit In Paris with the French Premier Paul Reynaud, and telephoned London afterwards to ask for six more fighter squadrons to be sent to France. At a cabinet meeting late in the afternoon of the same day, Sinclair mentioned Dowding's argument, which led to the cabinet to agree that the additional six squadrons could operate from French airfields in the day, but had to return to the United Kingdom at night. Churchill was angered by the way that Dowding's arguments had swayed the cabinet into a decision that he did not want and came to feel a grudge against Dowding. In a clear sign of disfavour, Churchill barely mentioned Dowding in Their Finest Hour, volume 2 of his memoirs/history of the Second World, and in the few times that he did, he gave distorted accounts that cast Dowding in a dark light. In Their Finest Hour, Churchill wrote: "Air Chief Marshal Dowding, at the head of the metropolitan Fighter Command, had declared to me that with twenty-five squadrons of fighters he could defend the island against the whole of the German Air Force, but that with less he would be overpowered". Deighton wrote that this statement was "nonsense" as Dowding in a letter to Churchill dated 15 May 1940 had expressed grave concerns about the ability of Fighter Command to hold out against the Luftwaffe with only thirty-six squadrons. When the Allied resistance in France collapsed, he worked closely with Air Vice-Marshal Keith Park, the commander of 11 Fighter Group, in organising cover for the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force at Dunkirk.

Through the summer and autumn of 1940 in the Battle of Britain, Dowding's Fighter Command resisted the attacks of the Luftwaffe.

Dowding's subsequent downfall has been attributed by some to his single-mindedness and perceived lack of diplomacy and political savoir faire in dealing with intra-RAF challenges and intrigues, most obviously the still, even now, hotly debated Big Wing controversy in which a number of senior and active service officers had argued in favour of large set-piece air battles with the Luftwaffe as an alternative to Dowding's successful Fabian strategy. Another reason often cited for his removal, but characterised by some contemporary commentators more as a pretext, was the difficulty of countering German nighttime bombing raids on British cities.

The account of radar pioneer, E. G. Bowen in Radar Days (1987) rebuts the claim that Dowding's grasp of the problems of British night fighters was inadequate. He suggests that if Dowding had been left to follow his own path, the ultimately effective British response to night bombing (which depended completely on developments in air-borne radar) would have come somewhat sooner.

Dowding himself showed that he had a good grasp of night fighter defence and was planning a defence system against night bombing in a letter he wrote some time after the Battle of Britain. However, there was great political and public pressure during the Blitz for something to be done, and Fighter Command's existing resources without, as yet, airborne radar, proved woefully inadequate. A committee of enquiry chaired by Sir John Salmond produced a long list of recommendations to improve night air defence; when Dowding approved only some of them, his erstwhile supporters, Lord Beaverbrook and Churchill, decided that it was time for him to step down. Before the war, the leadership of the RAF was committed to winning the next war via strategical bombing, and it was an article of faith amongst the senior Air Marshals that it would be impossible for fighter aircraft to stop a bombing offensive. Deighton wrote that the RAF leadership "acted more vindictively" against Dowding and Park for winning the Battle of Britain than Hermann Göring did with the defeated Luftwaffe generals largely because Dowding and Park had proven the Air Ministry wrong by defeating a strategical bombing offensive. Dowding and Park were summoned to meet what Beaverbrook called a gang of "bloody Air Marshals" who in a quasi-trial accused Dowding and Park of failure in the Battle of Britain. Both Trafford Leigh-Mallory and the fighter ace Douglas Bader argued at the meeting that the Big Wing tactics were superior to those practiced by Dowding and Park, who were effectively treated as if they had lost the Battle of Britain.

Dowding unwillingly relinquished command on 24 November 1940 and was replaced by Big Wing advocate Sholto Douglas. Churchill tried to soften the blow by putting him in charge of the British Air Mission to the United States, responsible for the procurement of new aircraft types.

Publication of his book Twelve Legions of Angels was suppressed in November 1941. The British Government considered that it contained information which might be of use to the Germans. The book was finally published in 1946, soon after the war ended.

Later life

thumb|Lord Dowding laying the foundation stone of the RAF chapel, now known as St. George's Chapel of Remembrance, at [[RAF Biggin Hill in 1951]]

Later in life, because of his belief that he was unjustly treated by the RAF, Dowding became increasingly bitter. The RAF passed him over for promotion to Marshal of the Royal Air Force.

In 1951, Dowding laid the foundation stone of the Chapel of St George at RAF Biggin Hill, now London Biggin Hill Airport, in memory of fallen airmen.

In 1967, Dowding served as technical advisor in the film production of Battle of Britain, a Harry Saltzman production, his character played by Laurence Olivier.

Dowding and his second wife Baroness Dowding were both anti-vivisectionists, and in 1973 Britain's National Anti-Vivisection Society founded the Lord Dowding Fund for Humane Research in his honour.

Spiritualism

In his retirement, Dowding became actively interested in spiritualism, both as a writer and speaker. His first book on the subject, Many Mansions, was written in 1943, followed by Lychgate (1945), The Dark Star and God's Magic. Rejecting conventional Christianity, he joined the Theosophical Society which advocated belief in reincarnation. He wrote of meeting dead "RAF boys" in his sleep – spirits who flew fighters from mountain-top runways made of light. He was also a member of the Fairy Investigation Society. Although he knew that people considered him a crank for his belief in fairies, Dowding believed that fairies "are essential to the growth of plants and the welfare of the vegetable kingdom".

Death

Dowding died at his home in Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent, on 15 February 1970. His body was cremated and his ashes were placed below the Battle of Britain Memorial Window in the Royal Air Force chapel in Westminster Abbey. Dowding's son Derek (1919–1992) inherited the title of Baron Dowding. She had one child from a previous marriage, Marjorie Brenda Williams (1911–2003) and they had one child together, Derek Hugh Tremenheere (1919–1992). Clarice died in 1920,]]

In the 1940s and 1950s, H.D. wrote several novels, memoirs, and book-length poems about Dowding.

Portrayals

Dowding has been portrayed by:

Charles Carson (1956) Reach for the Sky
Laurence Olivier (1969) Battle of Britain; Olivier had himself served as a pilot in the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm during the Second World War. During filming in summer 1968, 86 years old and unable to walk due to severe arthritis, Dowding visited the set at Hawkinge airfield in Kent. Olivier told Dowding he had sat behind the latter's desk all day "pretending to be you" and was "making an awful mess of it too", to which Dowding replied, "Oh, I'm sure you are." The crew and Olivier broke into laughter. Footage of this can be seen in the special features section of the film's Special Edition DVD.
Adrian Rawlins (2017) Darkest Hour
Nicholas Farrell (2018) Hurricane: 303 Squadron

Honours and tributes

left|thumb|upright|[[Baron Dowding|Lord Dowding statue, St Clement Danes, the Strand, London]]

thumb|upright|Memorial at [[Royal Tunbridge Wells]]

A statue of Dowding stands outside St Clement Danes church on the Strand, London. The inscription reads:<br/>

Other monuments to Dowding can be found in Station Park in Moffat, the town of his birth, and in Calverley Gardens in Tunbridge Wells near to where he died. The RAF Association in conjunction with the RAF Benevolent Fund, purchased his birthplace, the former St Ninian's School, Moffat; the building was renamed Dowding House and restored to provide sheltered housing for former members of the Royal Air Force or their dependents.

The Dowding Centre at the School of Aerospace Battle Management (formerly the School of Fighter Control) at RAF Boulmer is named after Dowding.

A green ceramic commemorative plaque was unveiled at his former residence (1951–1967) in Darnley Drive, Southborough on 6 May 2012.

Dowding Place, Stanmore, the site of former RAF Stanmore Park is named after him.

The 1946-built Southern Railway Battle of Britain pacific (4-6-2) locomotive 21C152 was named Lord Dowding in his honour.

References

Sources

External links

Battle of Britain in the Words of Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding