He ordered Dowding to cut the
training period and send him pilots, half-trained if necessary, but pilots of
whatever calibre, to fill the empty cockpits.
Dowding refused. New pilots, even with a full
period of training, were no
match for experienced aviators in their Fokkers. To cut the training program,
to send them over without the best training he could give them, would be
tantamount to murder. He would not do it. Trenchard’s answer came booming back
across the Channel: “If you won’t give me the bloody recruits, give me their
instructors!” Dowding refused angrily. To do so would destroy even the
possibility of giving the chicks a decent chance of life over there. He was in
command of training, and he would run the command in his own way! He very
quickly then learned the facts of life, as an immediate order came in from
Headquarters, Royal Flying Corps, transferring nearly all his instructors to
the front. He was left with just one for each training squadron.
This was disastrous, Dowding railed. The
instructors would soon be killed in France, and with only one instructor per
squadron, the flow of new pilots would be so drastically curtailed that the RFC
would soon cease to exist. But Trenchard was the power in the new service, and
the order was repeated. So Dowding made one last effort, writing to Trenchard’s
Senior Personnel Staff Officer (SPSO) and asking him to intercede, to explain
that the training brigade simply couldn’t afford to lose its instructors. But
the SPSO hadn’t reached his exalted position by being blind and deaf. He knew
better than to try to explain to Trenchard anything that the boss didn’t want
to hear explained. Instead, he showed him Dowding’s letter, and the resulting
boom was heard clear across the Channel, frightening the gulls from Dover to
Brighton and unborn children in their mothers’ wombs. “That finished me with
Trenchard,” Dowding realized.
Six
In the summer of 1940, all the hopes of the
free world would hang by the threads strung together by Dowding to frustrate
and foil the Nazi Huns. During the late 1930s, first as director of research
and then as head of Fighter Command, he would form the technical weapons, the
support facilities, the new generation of fighters, and the interlocking
operational support to make possible a defence against the bomber—a defence
that everyone else thought was impossible. Alone among his colleagues, he would
fight and argue and somehow put it all together, barely in the nick of time.
Looking back today at all the other senior commanders of the Royal Air Force
and His Majesty’s government, it is impossible to identify anyone else who
could have done it.
He was, as a contemporary general put it, “a
difficult man, a self opinionated man, a most determined man, and a man who
knew more than anybody about all aspects of aerial warfare.”
Some twenty years earlier, when the First World
War ended in 1918, he had very nearly been drummed out of the service.
As the War to End All Wars came to its
flawed conclusion, the impetus to close down the armed forces was strong. Boom
Trenchard emerged as the strongman of the Royal Flying Corps. Taking office as
Chief of Air Staff when it was reformed as the Royal Air Force (RAF), he saved
it from a bewildering array of parliamentary cost cuts, and he did so by
considering who was essential and who was not.
And of all the nonessential officers in that
war just ended, Hugh “Stuffy” Dowding was high on his list of those to be
discarded. Kicked out of France by Trenchard, he had at least survived the war,
while most of his contemporaries had not. In consequence, by 1918 he was one of
Trenchard’s most senior officers, but soon after the cessation of hostilities,
he was informed by mail that “your services will no longer be required in the
Royal Air Force.” He was dismissed from the RAF, with orders to return to the
Garrison Artillery.
In light of his steadily worsening
training period and send him pilots, half-trained if necessary, but pilots of
whatever calibre, to fill the empty cockpits.
Dowding refused. New pilots, even with a full
period of training, were no
match for experienced aviators in their Fokkers. To cut the training program,
to send them over without the best training he could give them, would be
tantamount to murder. He would not do it. Trenchard’s answer came booming back
across the Channel: “If you won’t give me the bloody recruits, give me their
instructors!” Dowding refused angrily. To do so would destroy even the
possibility of giving the chicks a decent chance of life over there. He was in
command of training, and he would run the command in his own way! He very
quickly then learned the facts of life, as an immediate order came in from
Headquarters, Royal Flying Corps, transferring nearly all his instructors to
the front. He was left with just one for each training squadron.
This was disastrous, Dowding railed. The
instructors would soon be killed in France, and with only one instructor per
squadron, the flow of new pilots would be so drastically curtailed that the RFC
would soon cease to exist. But Trenchard was the power in the new service, and
the order was repeated. So Dowding made one last effort, writing to Trenchard’s
Senior Personnel Staff Officer (SPSO) and asking him to intercede, to explain
that the training brigade simply couldn’t afford to lose its instructors. But
the SPSO hadn’t reached his exalted position by being blind and deaf. He knew
better than to try to explain to Trenchard anything that the boss didn’t want
to hear explained. Instead, he showed him Dowding’s letter, and the resulting
boom was heard clear across the Channel, frightening the gulls from Dover to
Brighton and unborn children in their mothers’ wombs. “That finished me with
Trenchard,” Dowding realized.
Six
In the summer of 1940, all the hopes of the
free world would hang by the threads strung together by Dowding to frustrate
and foil the Nazi Huns. During the late 1930s, first as director of research
and then as head of Fighter Command, he would form the technical weapons, the
support facilities, the new generation of fighters, and the interlocking
operational support to make possible a defence against the bomber—a defence
that everyone else thought was impossible. Alone among his colleagues, he would
fight and argue and somehow put it all together, barely in the nick of time.
Looking back today at all the other senior commanders of the Royal Air Force
and His Majesty’s government, it is impossible to identify anyone else who
could have done it.
He was, as a contemporary general put it, “a
difficult man, a self opinionated man, a most determined man, and a man who
knew more than anybody about all aspects of aerial warfare.”
Some twenty years earlier, when the First World
War ended in 1918, he had very nearly been drummed out of the service.
As the War to End All Wars came to its
flawed conclusion, the impetus to close down the armed forces was strong. Boom
Trenchard emerged as the strongman of the Royal Flying Corps. Taking office as
Chief of Air Staff when it was reformed as the Royal Air Force (RAF), he saved
it from a bewildering array of parliamentary cost cuts, and he did so by
considering who was essential and who was not.
And of all the nonessential officers in that
war just ended, Hugh “Stuffy” Dowding was high on his list of those to be
discarded. Kicked out of France by Trenchard, he had at least survived the war,
while most of his contemporaries had not. In consequence, by 1918 he was one of
Trenchard’s most senior officers, but soon after the cessation of hostilities,
he was informed by mail that “your services will no longer be required in the
Royal Air Force.” He was dismissed from the RAF, with orders to return to the
Garrison Artillery.
In light of his steadily worsening
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