Alternate Generals II

Their daughter was radiant.

Clarice carried a lot of sewing stuff under one arm. A work in progress. "What's all this?" Rather late to be constructing another dress.

"We've had a bit of a disaster," said Clarice. "My dress got burned at the cleaner."

Hugh Dowding bristled. What had the clot been thinking to use that kind of heat on antique silk? "I shall have words with the bounder."

But no. There were no words to be had with the proprietor.

The dress had burned along with the rest of the cleaner's establishment.

Dowding drew the curtains closed. The world outside had gone to hell.

Dick Trafford, the British air attache upon whom the task had been foisted, turned another tedious page. Groaned. Ground his teeth at every self-righteous paragraph.

What made Stuffy Dowding think that anythinghe did could have made a difference? He would have forced us into a defensive battle. His strategy involved avoiding casualties rather than inflicting them on the enemy. His plan was to hold out until the Cha

He found fault with everything the RAF did. Especially with the RAF's finding fault with that Heath Robinson defensive organization Dowding left behind him.

Trafford did not appreciate the accusatory tones with which Stuffy dressed down those who sabotagedhis RDF system.

Sabotaged. He had the nerve to use that word!

The Radio Direction Finding system successfully detected enemy aircraft approaching England, but that information had not arrived where it needed to go. The links of Dowding's complex communication system broke down.Our fault.

He blames us for lack of intercepts. Likens us to inept ru

Does this man not realize how difficult it is to route information in times like that? There was no time! The information could change in a moment.

The system would have needed to work like a clock, and Dowding certainly had a clocklike mind. No fighting man here.

Had Dowding still been in charge, he would have eliminated standing patrols, and instead waited until his RDF detected enemy craft on their way. This (he says) would lessen the chance of the Luftwaffe catching us on the ground between patrols.

Kept harping on the harsh reality that a Spitfire needed twenty minutes to climb to effective altitude. True. But might the humble air attache point out to the esteemed ACM Dowding that the RDF apparatus pointoutward? Once the Luftwaffe crossed the coast, they were out of electronic sight. What point having the altitude advantage over the enemy if you did not know whether he had turned?

To this problem, Dowding answered with his Observer Corps. A true scientific marvel there. Involved men and women with binoculars going outside and looking up.

This Stone Age organization would have telephoned vectors to Ops who would track the plots on a map. Ground Controllers would radio the course changes to fighter aircraft already aloft.

Did the man not read his own words? Could he not see howstuffy he was? The whole concept ran so counter to the RAF fighting spirit that one could not read more than a page of it without needing to get up and walk off the insult.

Dowding wrote in highly critical terms of the aggressive leadership that followed his tepid reign. He found fault with RAF attacks on the Luftwaffe bases in Normandy.

Well, Stuffy, if we had not hit their airfields, there would have been still more of them camping on the French coast in still closer striking distance of our shores. We would have lostsooner.

Dowding's contention was that we should have preyed on the weakness of the ME 109, which the Spitfire shared; its lack of range. A fighter going either direction had only minutes over enemy territory in which to do battle before it must turn around, else risk ditching in the Cha

Dowding wrote that we need never have crossed the Cha

Dowding would not even have dispatched interceptors for those German fighters who came over two by two on free hunts. Just let the pairs of MEs come buzzing over for a jolly, stitch up the tarmac, and return to France. Those Dowding would have left to the sector guns. Said he would not have been provoked into an aerial battle. Did not want to expend the aircraft.

"Stuffy, you wouldn't have spent them at all!" Dick Trafford shouted at the manuscript. Provoked. "Aircraft are not a defensive weapon! The RDF facedout! You use it to guide bombers and fighters to their target and home again, you pompous twit! The Hun knows how to use aircraft!"

Had come out of his chair. Sat back down. Glanced self-consciously about. Hoped his shouts had not carried through the walls.

Returned to his labour, reading how we should have sat and let the Germans shoot us. Wait for the bombers before we did anything.

Dowding criticized the RAF's lack of adherence to a single coherent plan-his.

Hit nearly home with that one. Plans. The RAF had no want of plans. Everyone was an expert. Too many plans and no commitment toone. That killed us.

But to say thatthis one, Hugh Dowding's, was the one that would have saved England was as absurd as it was arrogant.

Stuffy had particularly strong words for the Big Wing approach, wherein vast numbers of enemy aircraft were met with vast numbers of interceptors. A natural plan of action. But Stuffy faulted the time it took to muster a Big Wing, then to find the enemy without the help of an Observer Corps.

A Big Wing put all one's resources in one place. When that place had been on the ground, refueling, a second huge wave of the Luftwaffe's limitless attackers had destroyed much of our Big Wing on the ground.

Did not hindsight make any man appear brilliant?

In what was surely the most bald stroke of impudence, he called Douglas Bader a truly heroic young man of unquestioned courage and ardent patriotism with a faulty grasp of tactics and none of strategy. A junior officer given too much credence.

Trafford snarled at the page: Douglas Bader died in defense of his country. How generous of you not to question his courage.

In parting, this mother hen complained bitterly of the RAF's sending up untrained pilots. Did he think he could have told the Hun to wait while we got enough air under our pilots' bums to qualify? The battle would have been lost by the time Dowding let them fight!

Turned the last page. The end, none too soon. The anger stayed. Felt like telling the Reichsmarschall to shoot him.

They should have put Stuffy out to pasture long ago. The unmitigated conceit of this old man that he could be one of those rare souls upon whom events of the world pivot.

Dowding returned to the jeweler's shop. Like the tongue that probes a chipped tooth again and again, making sure that nothing changed in the instant between visits, he could not stay away. He stood, helpless, before the gutted, blackened wound.

Sensed someone pass behind him on the pavement. Glanced after passerby.

A young man kitted up like a Pilot Officer at dispersal, complete with yellow Mae West over his wool jersey. No swastika on his arm. He wore his second-best blue trousers and fleece-lined boots.