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A Summer Bright and Terrible: Winston Churchill, Lord Dowding, Radar, and the Impossible Triumph of the Battle of Britain

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After more than half a century of analysis and thousands of books on World War II one might think that all the important stories have been told. Yet David E. Fisher's account of how one man's vision, courage and tenacity may well have changed the course of world history is just such a work.

Many books have been written about the Battle of Britain and many if not most historians now agree that it was one of the most decisive victories in history. For if Goering's Luftwaffe had defeated the Royal Air Force, Hitler would have almost certainly have invaded and conquered a weak and unprepared England. With Britain out of the war, America's supply lifeline to Russia would have been crippled, and it too would have fallen to the Nazis. A new Dark Age would have descended over all of Europe and much of the civilized world as German scientists worked day and night to build an atomic bomb and the V-10, a multi-stage rocket capable of reaching the United States.

But that is not how history played out. The RAF, outnumbered three to one, managed to defeat the Luftwaffe because it had the Spitfire, the finest fighter plane of the day, and a new and unproven technology, radar, which enabled the defenders to know in advance where the enemy would attack. Without either, Hitler would surely have won.

What makes Fisher's account so compelling is how clearly he shows that the efforts of one man, Air Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, made all the difference. Dowding himself was the exact opposite of the popular image of a cigar chomping "we'll bomb the hell out of them" type of military leader. He was a mystic and a vegetarian who believed it was possible to communicate with departed spirits on `the other side'. A quiet, introspective man, he had few friends and many enemies. He also possessed extraordinary vision and tenacity.

When in the mid 1930s the British military had all but decided to equip the RAF with an obsolete bi-plane fighter design reminiscent of World War I, Dowding fought to reverse the decision with a multi-gun monoplane based on the latest civilian racing planes. He won and the result was the Spitfire.

Dowding's greatest single contribution, however, was his unflinching belief that only the new and highly experimental technology that today we call radar would enable a small force of defending fighters to prevail over a much larger attacking enemy. As head of the RAF's research department in the years before the war he was perfectly positioned to champion both radar and the Spitfire but his battles with the military and political establishments very nearly cost him his career.

Not long before the war started he was made head of Fighter Command and as the Nazi blitzkrieg spread across Europe he came into conflict with Prime Minister Churchill. France was collapsing under the onslaught of German panzer divisions. Churchill wanted to dispatch ten RAF fighter squadrons to bolter the French. Dowding argued that such action would be futile and more importantly the loss of those ten squadrons would make it impossible to defend England. Churchill, also a man noted for his stubbornness, would not relent.

Then an extraordinary exchange took place that speaks volumes about both Dowding and Churchill. Dowding asked to take his case to the War Cabinet, in effect going over Churchill's
head. This was a highly confrontational move for a serving officer, all the more so because the man being confronted was the pugnacious, indomitable Winston Churchill. A lesser man would have refused but the greatness of Churchill shines through when he, recognizing the both the gravity of the decision and the courage of Dowding to press his case, agreed. Dowding made a brief presentation to the War Cabinet which overruled the Prime Minister and the rest is history.

This delightfully written book is intended for a general audience and would be suitable for teen readers. It would make a perfect companion volume to Sen. John McCain's just released "Character is Destiny". I hope very much that "A Summer Bright and Terrible" will be made into a motion picture someday. It is an inspiring story that deserves a large audience, both young and old.

When did Hitler lose the war?

You could point to the failure of Operation Typhoon - the doomed attempt to take Moscow in the autumn of 1941, Stalingrad, Kursk, Operation Bagration, or D-Day.

You could make a good case for any of these, with Typhoon and Stalingrad on the shortest of short lists.

But you would have forgotten one battle more important than any of these: the Battle of Britain. Failure at this point would have left Hitler supreme.

David E Fisher introduces us to the people who we should thank for the fact that Operation `Sea Lion' never took place.

He takes us through the history of the development of the RAF in the pre-war years, and considers the strands which led to victory over the Luftwaffe in the autumn of 1940.

To Air Marshall Dowding must go the ultimate credit for making victory possible.

First, when everyone else believed with Stanley Baldwin that "the bomber will always get through", Dowding knew the RAF had to have fighters.

He was in the right place to influence events. In 1930, he was promoted to Air Marshall, and appointed to the post of Supply and Research on the Air Council, and in 1937 he appointed head of Fighter Command.

Dowding needed to get a chain of radar receivers built, and was only given permission to go ahead, provided they did not interfere with the grouse shooting!

Every step of the way he battled Harris for funds. To Harris, Dowding was "out of touch." Bombers were what was wanted. Eventually, of course, Harris got is way, but only after an ungrateful Prime Minister had sacked Dowding, and the Battle of Britain had been won.

There were several occasions - several What If? moments - when Britain could have taken the road to defeat in the Battle of Britain.

1. What if the Air Ministry had ordered a new generation of biplane fighters, as they had wanted to? Planes that lacked the speed, the armament and the height to take on Hitler's Luftwaffe.

If the Air Ministry had had its way, the Luftwaffe would have been met by planes like the Tiger Moth.

Instead they ordered the Spitfire developed by Reginald Mitchell of Vickers Supermarine, and based on his Schneider Trophy-winning monoplane.

Sydney Camm, designer at Hawkers, also got the message, and designed the Hurricane along similar lines.

It was Squadron Leader Ralph Sorley who determined that the Spitfire needed eight guns not four. Eight guns were needed to take maximum advantage of that split second which was all the pilot might get.

2. What if Churchill's friend Professor Lindeman had had his way, and that work on an infrared detection system had replaced the development of radar?

No such detection system could have picked out the bomber's infrared from all the other infrared signals in the background. Hitler's bombers would have got through.

In this book you will meet Arnold `Skip' Wilkins, who learned that Post Office engineers had noted the effect of aircraft on VHF reception, and that this might be followed up as a means of detecting enemy aircraft. Radar was conceived.

(His boss, Robert Watson Watt took all the credit!)


3. What if Arthur Harris - appointed to Bomber Command at the same time Dowding was appointed to Fighter Command - had got his way, and Britain had concentrated on building bombers in 1938? Hitler's bombers would have got through.

4. What if Dowding had caved in to Churchill's demand for an extra ten squadrons of fighters for France in May 1940?

Dowding refused, and gave the War Cabinet his reasons.

The author tells us that no one spoke. No one supported him. They were all terrified of Churchill.

Left to fight his own corner, Dowding showed them a graph of his "wastage rates" and told them that there would be no Hurricanes left " ... in France or in this country" if such losses were sustained for another fortnight. The cabinet agreed with Dowding.

Had they not done so, Hitler's bombers would have got through.

Thanks to this splendid piece of history by David E Fisher, Lord Dowding, and the people around him, are restored to their rightful place: war winners.

Where would we have been without them?

This is a brilliant account of the Battle of Britain. As Hitler unleashed the Luftwaffe against Britain, the Summer of 1940, writes David Fisher, was too long and too short; too bright and too terrible: "Too long," because it seemed like an eternity before the onset of the high Fall winds that would roil the North Atlantic and make a cross-channel invasion impossible. "Too short," because there was insufficient time to mass-produce Spitfires and Hurricanes, train pilots, and build and staff radar stations. "Too bright," because an unusually dry and clear Summer ("where the bleep are the clouds, the fog, the rain") created perfect conditions for the Luftwaffe assault, and "too terrible," because of the all the planes that were falling from the sky.

"Brilliant" is a good word to describe the man who was most responsible for England's defense: Hugh Dowding. And he was prescient, too. Dowding saw early that fighter squadrons, not bombers, were the key to the island nation's defense, bucking conventional wisdom in the Air Ministry. He out-argued Winston Churchill (Churchill!) to prevent the senseless transfer of precious British fighter planes during the Battle of France: "if the present rate of wastage continues for another fortnight, we shall not have a single Hurricane left in France or in this country." He envisioned the essential role of radar - at a time when others, including Churchill, were promoting fanciful schemes like the death ray - and overcame inane resistance (`make sure they don't interfere with the grouse hunting") to construct a chain of radar towers on the eve of war. His strategy of sending small numbers of Spits and Hurris ("penny packets") to contest the Luftwaffe proved to be masterful. Hermann Goring became deluded into believing England's fighter squadrons had been decimated. When Goring went for the kill, Dowding summoned the reserves he had been holding back, and -- aided by the early warning of radar - trounced the Luftwaffe and ended the Battle of Britain.

Surprisingly, Dowding was cashiered (or more politely, "retired on schedule") shortly thereafter. Hitler's failure in the Battle of Britain engendered The Blitz. Churchill demanded an immediate defense. Dowding said there was no effective defense against the nighttime bombing until better fighter planes were produced, equipped with individual radar sets and better armaments. Events would prove Dowding right. But he had made many enemies in the top echelons of the Air Ministry, and had little support in resisting Churchill. Indeed, his antagonists in the Air Ministry even conspired to revise the history of the Battle of Britain to make his successful strategy seem a failure.

Dowding was an eccentric guy. He claimed to communicate regularly with his dead wife as well as the pilots (his "chicks") who perished over England. Shortly after retirement, he married a young widow at the recommendation of her recently killed fighter-pilot husband. At the end, many of his contemporaries thought he'd gone off the deep end. But at the time of its greatest peril, he was the guy who, in Fisher's words, "made the life-and-death decisions that saved England." And altered the course of the Second World War.

Anyone searching for a decent history of the Battle of Britain, a biography of Lord Dowding, insight into the development of radar OR the role of Winston Churchill in any of these will have to look elsewhere. In this poorly edited atrociously written volume the author manages to take fascinating material and reduce it to a sort of peculiar tabloid scandal sheet. It is painfully unclear what Fisher's intent is in writing this book, at one point it seems like he is trying to ressurect the reputation of an "unsung hero" but at the next he is doing his best to make fun of the very person that he has built up. The style of the book borders on the peculiar -there are no notes or citation, just a somewhat sparse "bibliography" yet we get large sections in quotation marks & whole mental dialogs that occur in the heads of the protagonists, who "chortle" and sneer at each other on every third page -don't get me wrong here, Fisher has written a very "post-modern" book, there really are no heroes, just different levels of fools, knaves and villains, all of whom steal from each other, cut each other out of the credit, thwart each other's ambitions, and generally behave like a nasty set of academics at a faculty meeting from hell. As an example of the egregious errors in this text, for some reason Fisher seems obsessed with tanks -even though he conspicuously ignores Churchill's role in their initial development. Again and again he talks about tanks "winning" the First World War & "breaking the back" of the German armies. This is odd, given that the tank arrives in the First War in September of 1916 -half-way through- and had little if any impact on the situation on the Western Front. Strangely, the role of the Royal Navy's blockade in "breaking the back" of Germany's will to fight seems to have escaped Fisher's notice... Fisher's cultural biases are also very much to the fore: at one point the English pilots spend their time between missions either throwing up or suffering from diarrhea. Their American counterparts in the meantime "chat". Fisher regularly allows his purple prose to wander into this sort of silliness & one is constantly wonderingif things really were as terrible (and silly) as he says how on earth did the Germans not win? In all seriousness, this is a very stupid and above all "little" book that simply isn't worthy of the subject. It is not just that readers will be mislead by Fisher's poor use of the material it is more that they are likely to not bother to pursue the many important themes that ctually emerged in the run-up to the Battle of Britain because they are so turned off by the shallowness of the schloarship exhibited here. One reads this book for the same reason one slows at car wrecks, out of a morbid interest in calamity.

This is an excellent book for anyone interested in WWII, especially the ETO. There are a couple of nice pluses in this book.

First, the story is broader than usual. There are certainly other good histories of the Battle of Britain, but this is the best treatment I have seen of the lead-up to the battle on the British side. Specifically, the development of RADAR and the Spitfire.

The other nice facet of this book is that the author definitely makes his opinion known, keeping the book from being too dry, but at the same time, he is clear in distinguishng between his opinions and the facts.

Once I started this book, I just ripped right through it.

How can a summer be bright and terrible? Fisher writes convincingly that the long, dry, summer of 1940 over England offered the world a turning point, the Battle of Britain. The star was Hugh "Stuffy" Dowding, the aging officer responsible for the fighter defense of England. Faced with the assumption that fighters were too slow, too under armed, and too late - "the bomber will always get through" - and faced with an overwhelming enemy, Dowding had to Marshall has scarce "chicks", lull Hermann Goring into believing that England had no resistance left, and postpone Operation Sea Lion. This bright, terrible summer provided the backdrop for this well-documented battle. Fisher offers four parts - winter, spring, summer and fall - to create a complete context for this fascinating historical story.

The strategy was to fight strategically, with a few well-positioned squadrons taking on waves of German bombers and fighters. The "secret" to the success was the intricate defense communications system, based on nascent radar, a system that provided enough time for fighters to rise up to meet the Huns. Even at the time, Dowding's plan was not universally accepted. Even his success in turning the tide and postponing the inevitable invasion did not save him his job. Other people clamored for more credit, including Winston Churchill, rankled peers, a disgruntled scientist, and the legless fighter pilot, Douglas Bader. "Bomber" Harris and the "big wing" theory may have earned more press, but Fisher makes his point clearly, if personally and even conversationally, that Dowding saved the day, on stubborn spunk and science. Dowding leveraged his experience in the first Great War to manage a career based on science more than diplomacy or tact. He was loved by the men he led, and reviled by many of the peers he challenged.

Fisher even forgives Neville Chamberlain's aligned "appeasement" as a method for England to buy time in the run up to full-scale war. Clearly England was not yet equipped to defend itself at the time of Munich, but it is hard to know if Hitler would have been ready to go. Fisher is a scientist, a professor of cosmochemistry, who teaches about war and science, and he has a skill at putting together the scientific and technological advances that saved England as well as those half-baked ideas that fortunately did not stop radar and Dowding's communication system from stopping the onslaught. Fisher has a light, pleasant, non-technical writing style. The reader feels as if Fisher is telling a story, perhaps to a classroom of students. He details Dowding's life, including Dowding's fascination with spirit life, séances, and mediums. Fisher takes on some of the conventional wisdom as to heroes and chumps and leaves the reader satisfied with a thorough, personal story, even with Fisher's self-admitted bias about some incidents and people.

The final flare of the Battle of Britain, the second week in September 1940, when Hitler finally had to acknowledge that the invasion was off, provides a fitting climax to a climactic story. This is interesting history, enjoyable, educational and informative, vivid yet not graphic, personal, candid, and willing to look at both sides of the numerous accounts of this period. Having read many of them myself, I recommend this one as a satisfying experience.

I discovered Lord Dowding as the author did through Dowdings book "Lynchgate". The Battle of Britain, whilst not the saviour as most believe put a serious dent in Hitlers War Machine. Britain was to remain free and a "stepping stone" back into Europe.

Without Lord Dowding none of this would have been achieved. Bombing had been shown to be the way of modern warfare and fighters stuck in a time warp could not catch them. Dowding's obstinacy and prescience established a data-linked system of radar, operation rooms and fighters. Without him the World may have been a much different place.

Since owning and reading the book, I have lent it out to various people, some who admit to only occassionally reading! Everyone has been awe stuck by the story. Our debt of gratitude to those who fought the Second World War is aptly enhanced.

Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding has long been known to me as one of the most important men in the defeat of Hitler and Nazi Germany, yet few Americans know who he is.

David E. Fisher writes is an engaging style. There are several fine books that detail Hugh Dowding's contributions to the RAF's defeat of the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain, and his immediate dismissal afterwards.

Fisher writes a lot about Dowding's belief in the supernatural, but it is done in a sensitive and fair manner.

Fisher has done his research. This book is a great way to learn about one of the most decisive battles of WWII, and about one of its greatest heroes.

A Summer Bright and Terrible: Winston Churchill, Lord Dowding, Radar, and the Impossible Triumph of the Battle of Britain by David E. Fisher is the story of more of the more eccentric military geniuses, High Dowding, the Commander of RAF Fighter Command during The Battle of Britain. I mention eccentric because Dowding's bend-of-mind makes folks like Patton and Montgomery seem dead normal.

In fact, if you combined Patton's belief in reincarnation and the afterlife with Montogomery's stubbornness, you get a pretty good idea of how - under normal circumstances - loopy this man was. Fisher describes a man that openly spoke of discussions with dead fighter pilots and who married a woman whose dead husband recommended to Dowding that he do so. That selfsame woman, by the way, as a child had had dreams about a man named Hugh - vastly older than she - who had protected her from harm.

So, was Hugh Dowding a nut case?

Ultimately, it simply doesn't matter because this man also was responsible for some of the most innovative developments in aerial combat: multi-gunned monoplane fighters, radar and its associated ground-control infra-structure and the twin-engined radar carrying night fighter. Along the way, he also managed to stand up to Winston Churchill and maintain a cadre of the aforementioned fighters in England when the PM was bound and determined to lose them all in an effort to save France.

And in return for these efforts, he was villified in person and behind his back; left in suspense as to his future for months on end, dis-obeyed by several of his immediate subordinates and, ultimately, forced out of service. Years - no decades - Dowding has received his proper due for his accomplishment that thwarted Operation Sea Lion. It is he in the RAF alcove at Westminster - along with Trenchard - and not Leigh-Mallory.

The story is one of the most true examples of doing the right thing, despite and in spite of the potential repercussions. An absolutely excellent work. I only wish that Fisher had footnoted the book. By not not doing so, he hoists himself on his own petard of chastising those who mis-quote or fabricate.

This book is an excellent read. See all the other reviews for praise.

Do not buy the kindle version! It is spoilt not by poor proof-reading, but by the lack of any proof-reading whatsoever - it's full of OCR errors.

Buy a print version.