"STUFFY" DOWDING

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 3, Issue 257, 13 January 1941, Page 8

"STUFFY" DOWDING

GAVE R.A.F. SUPERIORITY

MAN YHO SAVED BRITAIN

When historians get a round to writing the history of the Avar, it may be that they Avill decide the man Avho saved Great Britain was not "Tiger" Gort or even Winston Churchill, but a tall, " cadaverous Scotsman called "Stuffy" Dowding (says a London dispatch to the New York Times). He is the man who in the face of great opposition finally convinced the British Air Council to put eight machine guns on the British fighter plane. Manoeuvrability, firing power, speed is his motto. He kept repeating it month after month until the Air Council finally gaA r e in and the Hurricane and Spitfire were the result. Stuffy Dowding also is responsible for the decision to place the) cockpit on the Hurricane behind the engine Avhere the pilot Avould have a maximum protection. On his own initiative he worked Avith a firm of glass manufacturers for a year until they developed a pilot's windshield that Avould shed machine gun bullets. ft would be impossible to over estimate the .importance of these decisions in the Battle for Britain. The reported British three-to-one adA T antage over the Germans in daylight air battle is due .more than anything else to the fact that the British have t\A r ice as many machine gun: in each plane as their opponents. It is not true to say British planes are superior in way. They are sloAver than the latest Messersclimitts and their ceiling is lower, but as every German pilot Avho has come doAvn here Avill tell you, Avhen the British let go AA'ith Stuffy DoAA'ding's eight machine guns, no bomber pilot in the wo rid can stay in formation. Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh CasAvall Tremenheere Dowding, now boss of Britain's fighter command, is a thin inscrutable figure in blue as he sits, at headquarters directing his fighter pilots by radio. By a vast complicated telephone system he knows the position of every bomber over the country and it is his job to direct the defence to meet every manoeuvre of the raiders In addition, it is his job to Avarn great urban centres Avhen raiders approach. The banishes howl at his command. Stuffy DoAvding flew with the Royal Flying Corps in the World War and his only son is a pilot to-day. He lias served these last 28 years in India and the Near East, where for a time he had charge of the U.A.F., and eA'en to~d.ay, at 58, he. still flies his own plane. Noted for his unsmiling Avit, his knobby knees, his stubborn Scotch temper and his quick decision in battle, Stuffy is essentially a flier's flier. *Tlie life of a military aviator," he tells his men,, "consists of hours of idleness punctuated by moments of fear." In the service his junior officers idolise him. When you comment on British success in the air, they all say: "Stuffy did it."