Overview

Lord Hugh Dowding, Air Chief Marshall of the Royal Air Force, Head of Fighter Command, First Baron of Bentley Priory, lived in the grip of unseen spirits. In thrall of the supernatural, he talked to the ghosts of his dead pilots, proclaimed that Hitler was defeated only by the personal intervention of God, and believed in the existence of faeries. How could it be that such a man should be put in charge of evaluating technical developments for the British air ministry? Yet it was he who brought the modern multi-gunned fighter into existence. And he insisted that his scientists investigate the mysterious invisible rays that would prove to be the salvation of Britain- radar. Dowding, who provided the organization and training that led to victory, has been all but ignored by U. S. biographers of Churchill and historians of the Battle of Britain. Yet his story is vital to tell, for its importance to the defense of Britain and the free world, and for the intriguing character study that emerges from his ongoing conflict with Churchill and the British government during the crisis years of the empire. Part military history, part science narrative, part biography; this an incredible story.

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9781593760472

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Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the hyperrational Sherlock Holmes, believed in fairies and ghosts. Why should a pioneer of radar defense systems not have done the same? His contemporaries, writes science historian and novelist Fisher (Hard Evidence, 1995, etc.), had trouble linking RAF commander-in-chief Hugh Caswall Tremenheere Dowding to the curious little man who lectured on spiritualism, talked to the long-dead inhabitants of Atlantis and believed in flying saucers. Is this Lord Dowding any relation to Sir Hugh Dowding who fought the Battle of Britain? asked a disbelieving attendee of one such lecture; when his friend replied that Dowding's son must have been the hero, the man added, I wonder what a smart guy like him would think of his old man going off the rails that way. Though unconventional, Dowding, as Fisher shows, was a careful reader of the skies, a gifted strategist of the air whose interest in invisible rays led to the establishment of ground-based radar defenses around southern England just in time to help ward off a Nazi invasion, and whose nimble command of the RAF, though not without its controversies, saved the day at the Battle of Britain. For instance, Fisher notes, Dowding had a much-discussed habit of hoarding his fighters, sending them up a few at a time into overwhelming odds so that he might have a few ready for tomorrow ; his pilots may not have enjoyed those odds, but when the Luftwaffe made its last desperate attempt to clear the way for that invasion, Dowding had the wherewithal to fight them off-and the radar to indicate just where the Luftwaffe would be found on that fateful day. All the same, Dowding does not often figure in surveys of WWII history, at least in some measure because Churchill fired him not long after the great British victory and wrote him out of his History of the Second World War. Given Dowding's extracurricular activities, one can understand why Churchill canned him. Still, Fisher's portrait of the dotty Dowding is a pleasure to read. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

David E. Fisher is the author of twenty-three books, including A Race on the Edge of Time and Fire and Ice. He and his son Marshall John Fisher co-wrote three books--Tube, Strangers in the Night, and Mysteries of the Past. Fisher is currently a professor of cosmochemistry and environmental sciences at the University of Miami, and also teaches graduate courses in theories of war and peace, and the impact of science on history. He holds a Ph.D. in nuclear physics.

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