"Stuffy"

CCLXXXVIII

Air Chief Marshal

Hugh Caswall Tremenheere Dowding,

1^st Baron Dowding, GCB, GCVO, CMG

In the 1920s, the accepted logic of air combat was, almost universally, that “the bombers will always get through.” The only man in Great Britain, and possibly in the world, who did not believe this maxim was Hugh Dowding (1882 – 1970), who at the time was an Air Commodore. Dowding was a man who both looked and acted absurdly like Jay Ward’s Commander McBragg, the caricature of a proper English officer. Even his fellow senior officers thought him condescending and aloof, so much so that among them, a group not generally known for their spontaneity and joie de vivre, he had earned the nickname “Stuffy.”

Commander McBragg

Despite Stuffy’s reputation, in private he was actually a warmhearted fellow who joined the Anti-Vivisectionist Society and the London Vegetarians’ Club and argued for the humane treatment of animals. He liked to ski --- so much so, that he had been Great Britain's amateur skiing champion for three years running. He was widely-read and widely-travelled (aside from his postings in Ceylon, Hong Kong, and India). He was also fond of children. During the Battle of Britain he would call the pilots of Fighter Command “my boys”.* And he was a Spiritualist, and a member of the Theosophical Society. His passion though, was flying, and in 1913 he transferred from the Royal Artillery to the Royal Flying Corps.

Dowding in 1914

He held several Commands during World War I including the “Wireless Experimental Establishment” which focused on several important technical issues, including how a pilot could communicate with the ground via radio, how pilots in formation could communicate via radio with each other, and, most outlandishly, how radio waves could be used to sight incoming enemy aircraft. By war’s end he was a Brigadier. 

He was still not popular either with his men or other officers but he had a reputation of being a tireless and efficient worker who got things done, often long before imposed deadlines. 

In 1930 he was appointed to the Air Council as Air Member for Supply and Research. This allowed him to continue his experiments with wireless. He was also responsible for granting the airship R-101 it’s Certificate of Airworthiness; after the dirigible crashed and burned Dowding took responsibility, saying that he should have demanded further testing of the craft despite pressure from above.**

R-101. Possibly the most beautiful and ornate airship ever built it crashed and burned on its maiden voyage

The disaster didn’t derail his career, but he became even more demanding, more circumspect, and less flexible in implementing others’ ideas. This caused resentment in the ADGB (“Air Defence Great Britain”) an intermediate reorganization of the Empire’s military air arm from the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) to the Royal Air Force (RAF). Dowding didn’t care what his colleagues thought of him. 

In 1936, Dowding was appointed as General Officer Commanding of the newly-formed RAF Fighter Command, and what he saw didn’t impress him. Fighter Command was understaffed, underfunded, undersupplied, and not much more than an afterthought of the bomber-minded Air Council.  All of its airplanes, even the newest Gloster Gladiators were Great War-derived open-cockpit biplanes with machine guns mounted where the pilot could reach them.

Not that Bomber Command was really very much better. Until 1936, all of its bombers were built along World War I lines, as biplanes with struts and wires. That year Bomber Command unveiled the Bristol Blenheim Mark I, an aircraft born not of government-backed development but of personal weal, for Lord Rothermere, the owner of the Daily Mail had had the plane designed as a private transport, and had then handed the plans over to Bomber Command which adapted them to warplane usage.

The Bristol Blenheim Mark I was the fastest bomber in the world when it was unveiled in 1936, but it could carry only six 500-lb bombs. Note the unusual arrangement of wind panels in the nose

“The bombers always get through” the Air Council decreed when Dowding first asked why Fighter Command was so anemic. It was an article of faith. Bomb-dropping airplanes were thought to be invincible, their only opponents being anti-aircraft fire (which was notoriously inaccurate) and the buzzing little fighters that could not keep up with the big planes nor inflict much damage with their two Lewis guns. A bomber similarly armed would more likely knock a fighter out of the sky. The only defense against these terror weapons, the Air Council had decided, was to seek shelter. 

Dowding disagreed and he brooked no argument on the subject. Bombers were not invincible, he told his fellows. Quite the opposite: If they were lining up to do a bomb run they were incredibly vulnerable, unable to take evasive action until “Bombs away!” had been sounded. 

Until that moment they were nothing but big, fat juicy targets for anyone looking to attack them.  What was needed, Dowding insisted, were better next-generation fighters, fighters that could keep pace with the bombers, fighters that could intercept the bombers before they even reached their targets. He had been talking with R.J. Mitchell over at Supermarine, and Sydney Camm at Hawker, and here were some preliminary designs. Oh, and here were blueprints filched from the Germans by our man in Berlin, and this was the Germans’ newest fighter plane . . .

The Messerschmitt Bf-109 of 1935

*Two of Dowding’s sons served in the Battle of Britain, one as a pilot and the other as a technician at Headquarters, but every man who served in Fighter Command was one of his “Dear Fighter Boys”. In after years, if any of them fell on hard times "Stuffy" helped them, either out of pocket or by arranging for needed assistance. He remained sentimental about “The Few” all his life long

**See XXXII “The ‘R-101’ Disaster” March 1, 2016