Engineering Hitler's Downfall. Gwilym Roberts

a Royal Artillery officer; he joined the Army in 1899 and in 1912 learned to fly at his own expense. He transferred to the RFC in 1914 and was for a period in the First World War in command of a wireless experimental establishment at Brooklands. Lucky to escape compulsory retirement at the end of the war, he then commanded RAF stations in London and Baghdad until 1930, when he was appointed to the Air Council as Air Member for Supply and Research. In this capacity he oversaw the introduction of a new generation of fighter and bomber aircraft and worked closely with Watson-Watt in establishing the radar network. In 1936 he was appointed commander in chief of the newly formed Fighter Command and established the integrated Ground Controlled Interception (GCI) system that operated the fighter aircraft during the Battle of Britain. He was then already past retirement age; despite the battle’s victorious conclusion, he was removed from office in late 1940 prior to retiring in 1942 after heading the Air Mission to the USA. His statue was erected outside the RAF’s church, St Clement Danes, in the Strand, London.

      Dowding and Park (and they alone) received copies of German signals that had been decrypted at Bletchley Park, initially via the Air Ministry but later directly by dedicated teleprinter. The information was filtered and then disseminated to Group 11 headquarters at Stanmore, north London, and to other group headquarters when necessary, and thence to sector operations rooms, the final link in the command chain. The sector controllers were the key men who bore the great responsibility of putting the squadrons in the air, positioning them, having executive authority over them until they saw the enemy, and eventually guiding them back to their bases. These controllers needed ‘a sense of judgement amounting to an intuition’, and they regarded themselves as much servants as commanders of the pilots they controlled.

      This integrated monitoring, communications, and control system was essential in enabling RAF fighters to be airborne and in the right place and height to attack the incoming bombers.

      Dowding GCI System of Monitoring, Communications, and Control

      Meanwhile, since October 1936 a small group of army scientists had been attached to Watson-Watt’s radar establishment. Over the following years they used radar-derived techniques to develop means of improving the accuracy of gun laying (GL) for anti-aircraft guns. The original techniques using 6 metre GL sets gave indifferent results, although the arrival of centimetric radar improved performance fivefold. Shooting down a raider in 1940, for example, on average required firing 20,000 rounds, but this was reduced to 4,000 rounds by the following spring. Proximity fuses were also created and proved to be very powerful anti-aircraft devices; they were likewise designed for use in shells, rockets and bombs. Details of their development were among the scientific secrets shared with the Americans by the Tizard mission in 1940.

      As for the Germans, they were later discovered to have been developing their own ‘Freya’ radar system, though it was too late for the Battle of Britain. Indeed, Major (later General) Adolf Galland, who flew Messerschmitt 109s during that conflict, wrote: ‘The British had, from the first, an extraordinary advantage, never to be balanced out at any time in the whole war: their radar and fighter-control network. It was for us and for our leadership a freely expressed surprise, and at that time a very bitter one, that Britain had at its disposal a close-meshed radar system, obviously carried to the highest level of current technique, which supplied the British fighter command with the most complete basis for direction imaginable ... We had nothing like it.’

      Magic Merlin

      As for those Spitfires and Hurricanes, they began the war with insufficient firepower, as Hastings asserted, but they had the benefit of one superlative piece of engineering – the Merlin engine.

      Following Rolls-Royce’s usual practice, the engine was named after a bird of prey, in this case a small falcon. It was designed by a team working under Ernest Hives, then the company’s general works manager and newly appointed board member who, after 1940, was ably assisted by Stanley Hooker. Both the Hurricane and Spitfire were designed around the Merlin engine.

      Hurricane and Spitfire Fighter Airplanes

      Among the persons principally responsible for the RAF being equipped with Hurricane and Spitfire fighters were Air Chief Marshal Sir Edward Ellington, who introduced a number of far-reaching expansion schemes; Wing Commander R. T. Williams and Squadron-Leader Ralph Sorley from the Air Ministry; and Sidney Camm and Ronald Mitchell, the chief design engineers of the Hawker Aircraft Company and the Supermarine Aviation Company respectively. The 1934 Air Ministry Specification F.5/34 was the original basis for these two fighter aircraft. However, following discussions between the officers and the two manufacturers, modified specifications were developed, F.36/34 and F.10/35 being the geneses of the Hawker Hurricane and the Supermarine Spitfire fighters respectively. The specifications required aircraft with a minimum speed of 500 km/h (310 mph) and were designed to be powered by the newly developed Rolls-Royce Merlin engines.

      Sorley, Air Marshal Sir Ralph KCB OBE DSC DFC FRAeS FRSA (1898–1974)

      Sorley was a pilot with the Royal Naval Air Service and the Royal Air Force during the First World War. In the 1930s he was instrumental in the creation of the specifications from which evolved both the Supermarine Spitfire and the Hawker Hurricane fighter aircraft. A senior commander during the Second World War, he founded the Empire Test Pilots’ School for training pilots in Canada and other overseas countries. He retired from the RAF in 1948 and joined De Havilland, where he assisted in the development of air-to-air missiles.

      Camm, Sir Sydney CBE FRAeS (1893–1966)

      Appointed Hawker Aircraft Company’s chief designer in 1925, Camm was responsible for the design of the wartime Hurricane, Typhoon, and Tempest aircraft and the post-war Hunter and P.1127 aircraft. The latter was the progenitor of the Harrier, the world’s first vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft. At the end of his career he was planning a plane to travel at Mach 4. The RAeS, of which he was president in 1954–5, has since 1971 held the biennial Sir Sydney Camm Lecture.

      Mitchell, Reginald J. CBE FRAeS MICE (1895–1937)

      In 1920, when only 25, he was appointed chief designer and chief engineer of the Supermarine Aviation Company, which specialised in the design and manufacture of seaplanes. These included a number of flying boats for the RAF and of high-speed racing seaplanes which were entered for the annual Schneider Trophy races held in the early inter-war years. Two Supermarine S.5 aircraft were entered in 1927, and finished first and second. The Supermarine S.6 won in 1929. The final entry in the series, the Supermarine S.6B, marked the culmination of Mitchell’s quest to ‘perfect the design of the racing seaplane’. The S.6B won in 1931 and broke the world air speed record 17 days later. When Vickers took over the Supermarine Company in 1928, they made it a condition that Mitchell should remain in post for at least five years. Following the issue by the Air Ministry in 1934 of the specification for a new fighter, Mitchell designed the Spitfire, bringing together a number of ideas originated by others but combining them and incorporating his own skill in designing high-speed aircraft. The first prototype was rejected because of unsatisfactory performance; however, a redesigned aircraft won the approval of the Air Ministry, and the prototype of the modified plane first flew in March 1936. During the early war years the Spitfire proved to be the most effective fighter aircraft. Altogether, Mitchell designed 24 aircraft. Sadly he died in 1937 aged 42, and thus did not live to see the vital role his aeroplane played in the defence of Britain and the free world.