the Chain Home radar network covering the approaches to London became operational in 1938.
The Air Staff could take the credit for having identified and backed two world-beating fighters and for moving fast to exploit Radio Direction Finding. What they failed to grasp fully was the damage these developments had done to the premises on which their theory of air power rested. The combination of radar, the sophisticated command and control system that it made possible and fast, well-armed fighters seemed to provide a plausible shield against an attempted ‘knock-out blow’.
The implications were spelled out by one senior officer who saw clearly the new reality. Hugh Dowding was appointed commander-in-chief of Fighter Command when it was created in July 1936, having been passed over for CAS in favour of Newall despite being his senior. He was regarded by his peers as humourless, earnest and aloof and well suited to his nickname, ‘Stuffy’. Before his appointment he had been in charge of research and development at the Air Ministry and it was largely on his initiative that the Hurricane and Spitfire were ordered. He had no scientific training but was open to new ideas and soon grasped the significance of RDF. It was he who devised the finely tuned system of collating raw radar reports and sightings from ground observers, filtering them through control centres and translating the refined information into orders to the fighter squadrons.
Dowding’s views ran head-on into the prevailing orthodoxy. He rejected the notion that counter-attack by bomber was the best form of defence in favour of a simpler idea. ‘The best defence of this country is Fear of the Fighter,’ he wrote. ‘If we are strong in fighters we should probably never be attacked in force. If we are moderately strong we shall probably be attacked and the attacks will gradually be brought to a standstill … if we are weak in fighter strength, the attacks will not be brought to a standstill and the productive capacity of the country will be virtually destroyed.’33 The overwhelming duty of the Air Force, he argued, was to secure the safety of the home base. Dowding’s views were heresy to the bomber cult. It took courage to maintain his beliefs in contradiction to the overwhelming official wisdom but he did so tenaciously, in the words of the official historians choosing ‘neither to understand other arguments, nor to compromise, nor even to accept with good grace the decisions that went against him’.34
On his own, Dowding was unable to deflect the Air Staff from the fixed notion that inspired all their strategic thinking. It needed an outsider to do that. The first major challenge to the primacy of the bomber arrived from an unexpected quarter. Sir Thomas Inskip came from a line of stolid West Country solicitors and parsons and was known, if at all, for his parliamentary objections to a new version of the Book of Common Prayer. The announcement early in 1936 that he was to be moved from his post as Attorney General to the newly created position of Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence was greeted with derision and incomprehension. The role had been created by the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, in an attempt to harmonize the rearmament effort. It was a vitally important job and big names were bandied about to fill it, among them Winston Churchill’s. Baldwin eventually decided Inskip was a safer bet, a decision that was approved by the Chancellor of the Exchequer Neville Chamberlain who noted in his diary that while he would ‘excite no enthusiasm’ he would ‘involve us in no fresh perplexities’.35 Inskip would confound the low expectations set for him.
When Scheme J arrived on his desk he coolly reassessed the a priori assumption contained within it that it was essential for Britain to possess a bomber strike force to match that of the Luftwaffe. To the quiet, God-fearing lawyer, it seemed that for the time being at least the emphasis should be on defence rather than offence and priority given to fighters. Admittedly, if war came that would mean that Britain would suffer more damage than it could inflict, but ‘the result would not at once be critical’.36 He believed that Germany did not have the resources to sustain a prolonged war and would therefore have to ‘knock us out in a comparatively short time’. The best course was to concentrate on warding off the initial assaults while preserving military and economic strength for a long-drawn-out fight which Britain would win through its superior staying power. He was prepared to propose an increase of only £100 million on top of the existing allocation for the previous expansion scheme. If the money was to be used effectively, the Air Ministry should spend it on relatively cheap fighters rather than expensive bombers.
The airmen fought back vigorously against this impertinent rejection of the professional wisdom that suffused their thoughts and actions. Swinton reiterated the mantra that ‘counter attack still remains the chief deterrent and defence’ and warned that ‘we must not exaggerate the possibilities’ arising from radar and other developments. He also mounted a political defence, suggesting strongly that the change of direction would play badly with the public, making it seem as if the government was abandoning its public promises to keep up with the Germans in the air.
He had misread the changing mood. It was the here and now that mattered currently, not theories for the future. When the whole question of defence expenditure was considered in cabinet on 22 December 1937, it was Inskip’s view that ‘parity with Germany was more important in fighter aircraft resisting aggression, than in the offensive role of bombers’ that prevailed.37
The Air Ministry was now compelled to work with him to draw up a new scheme – K – which reflected the reversal in policy. The bomber force was reduced from ninety squadrons to seventy-seven and allowance was made for only nine weeks of reserves, at the end of which, Newall observed bitterly, ‘the war would have been lost’. The numbers of the front-line fighter force remained the same at thirty-eight squadrons and 532 aircraft but there would be more than half as many again in reserve.
The Inskip intervention was taken badly by the Air Staff who resented an amateur trespassing on their territory and, as they saw it, endangering Britain’s security purely for the sake of financial expediency. The assault on the thinking that had sustained the Air Force for much of its short life was most resented by the chief evangelist. The fact that he was nine years retired did not stop Trenchard from publicly and privately denouncing the shift to fighters. ‘The old man was obstinately unrelenting – not only at this time but even after the war broke out – about adherence in any circumstances to the bomber policy,’ John Slessor remembered.38 It would turn out that, in the short term at least, Inskip was right and the Air Staff were wrong. This realization did little to shake the faith of the bomber cult, an attitude that would have profound consequences when the time came for Britain to fight on land and sea.
4
The great lexicographer of slang Eric Partridge recorded that in 1937 soldiers and sailors began to refer to their Air Force colleagues as the ‘Glamour Boys’.1 The term was not necessarily admiring or affectionate. A little later on the RAF attracted another nickname. They were the ‘Brylcreem Boys’, a reference to their habit of slicking their hair with a best-selling pomade. The manufacturers, County Chemicals of Birmingham, were delighted with the association. In 1939, launching the ‘handy active service tube’ they chose to dress the model in Air Force forage cap and tunic and during the war a glossy-haired airman appeared regularly in their advertisements. It was only many years later that the man in the ads, one Tony Gibson, was revealed as a conscientious objector who did several stints in jail for his beliefs.2
Hair cream and the Air Force seemed to go together. The product had a practical use. Richard Passmore, a wireless operator/air
