His Chicks

CCLXXXIX

From the moment Stuffy Dowding was given Fighter Command in 1936 he was determined to turn it into the greatest defensive air force the world had ever seen. 

Fighter Command would be defensive because Dowding knew that the only real risk to Great Britain would come from across the Channel. His colleagues on the Air Council laughed at him, for in 1936 the only aircraft that could reach Britain with any regularity were either Zeppelins or short-range fixed-wing planes from France and the Low Countries.  Stuffy deflated their cynicism quickly --- hadn’t Germany seized most of Belgium during the Great War?

They had to admit the truth of it. Belgium could very easily be a staging area for German air attacks in any coming war. 

Nobody but Pollyannas argued that the French air force could have a hand in stopping German aggression. France had had its share of aeronautical pioneers --- Santos-Dumont and Bleriot among them --- and in the air France had acquitted itself well in the last war with its SPADs, Morane-Saulniers and Nieuports, but nobody involved in the air defense of Britain could forget Marshal Foch’s dismissal of air power as worth “a zero” in war.  Plus, the British, though they appeased Hitler when they thought it necessary, did not have the allergy to war preparedness that the French exhibited at every turn. It was understandable. France had been the chief killing field of World War I, and so the French not only wanted to avoid war, they wanted it to be a non-issue in world affairs. So, though they had (numerically) the largest air force in the world in the mid-1930s most of their aircraft did not even come up to the standard of the Gloster Gladiator. 

His Majesty’s Government was at least willing to lay the groundwork for a winnable air war. So when Hugh Dowding pushed for monoplane fighters he got them.

 

During the war women were trained by the RAF to fly not in combat but as Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) pilots. They belonged to the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF). They delivered warplanes where they were needed, and though less prepared and usually unarmed they faced the danger of interception by German fighters as much as any man. WAAFs were renowned for their dash. The men called them the “Attagirls!”  Here, First Leftenant Maureen Dunlop prepares to lift off in her Spitfire. The Americans had a similar program, WAFS (Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Service) though unlike their British sisters WAFS were civilians, not members of the military. Ultimately, WAAF fliers could handle any of 38 types of aircraft

And once he had them he insisted on improvements. Rear view mirrors were put in the cockpits sparing the pilots from having to hunch around in the cramped space to check six. He demanded eight gun aircraft (four machine guns to each wing). And he demanded that the Perspex windows of the cockpits be replaced with bulletproof glass. This demand was dismissed out of hand. A furious Dowding retorted that if a Chicago mobster could have bulletproof glass in his car then certainly RAF pilots could have it in their planes. He got it.

Notorious mobster Al Capone had this 1928 Cadillac made bulletproof, including the windows which were at least two inches thick. After Capone went to prison for tax evasion, the U.S. Government used this car to transport President Franklin D. Roosevelt

Other innovations were in the offing. Dowding insisted that his pilots be rested every third day (under normal operating conditions) rather than being expected to fly on an as-needed basis. This raised a hue and cry, to which Dowding retorted that line soldiers were routinely rotated in order to give them a chance to rest and recuperate. Given that Spitfires and Hurricanes were far more complex and far less available than rifles or mortars he insisted that his pilots not be overworked, that they be well-fed and well-clothed and well-paid and well-housed. He was accused of “coddling” his men, but most of his innovations were adopted.

Despite his nickname, William Henry “Yank” Nelson was a Canadian from Montreal. He was the first Canadian ace of the Battle of Britain. He was lost in December of 1940

Far more controversial was Dowding’s decision to establish the Volunteer Reserve. Until 1936, virtually every RAF pilot, and virtually every pilot in the U.K. for that matter, came from an affluent or even titled background through which he’d had exposure to flying. Dowding thought the idea of such winged cavaliers was romantic but utterly ridiculous. Under the old system the RAF had a very small pool of pilots, a condition absolutely unacceptable in wartime. Had Britain been at war in 1936, virtually every trained British pilot could have been shot out of the sky in a single catastrophic afternoon leaving Britain defenseless from the air.

Flight Sergeant James Hyde of San Juan, Trinidad, and his pal Dingo

And they would have been shot down. Even the most experienced RAF pilots of the time (with a few crusty exceptions from the last war) had zero combat experience, while the Germans had blooded themselves in Spain.

Many RAF pilots of the Second World War were teenagers

Under Dowding’s new system, his so-called VRs (Volunteer Reservists) formed a healthy-sized pool of trained pilots. Some members of the Air Council were outraged; flying was a gentleman’s pursuit. Stuffy ignored his critics. The VRs were not titled young men, nor wealthy; instead, they were a selection of bright boys plucked from every conceivable social and economic stratus in Britain. Nothing could be done to give them combat experience, though before the war they engaged in mock dogfighting. But since most Fighter Command squadrons had no modern airplanes, the VR pilots almost always trained in slow biplanes that gave them hardly an inkling of what lay ahead for them.

A brood of “his chicks”

Dowding fussed over his pilots as though each one were his own son*. He called them “his chicks.”  There were those who thought his concern for the men of Fighter Command was somehow unmanly, but he insisted that when the time came the men of Fighter Command would be the bulwark of Britain. 

Everyone laughed at Stuffy. Wasn’t His Majesty’s Navy the mightiest on earth? Wasn’t the Royal Navy Britain’s true bulwark?  Everyone knew that Britannia ruled the waves; let the sky take care of itself, Dowding’s critics said.

*As noted previously, Dowding’s son was a pilot in Fighter Command