Battle of Britain - RAF Strategy - The Dowding System

The Dowding System

Further information: RAF Fighter Command Order of Battle 1940 Further information: List of officially accredited Battle of Britain squadrons

British defence was based on the "Dowding System", the complex infrastructure of detection, command, and control that ran the battle. It was named after its chief architect, Air Chief Marshal Sir H.C.T. "Stuffy" Dowding, the leader of RAF Fighter Command and the one important person in Britain—and perhaps the world—who had not believed the 1930s orthodoxy that "the bomber will always get through". Much of the air defence system had been originally set up from 1917 by Major General E B Ashmore. Dowding built upon and modernised many of the features of this system, including the use of two-way radio and the Royal Observer Corps (ROC). However, the core of Dowding's system was implemented by Dowding himself: the use of Radio Direction Finding (RDF, later called radar, for radio detection and ranging) was at his behest, and its use, supplemented by information by the ROC, was crucial to the RAF's ability to efficiently intercept incoming German aircraft. He also insisted on having the radar operators linked via telephone (whose wires were laid deep underground with concrete anti-bomb protection) to an operational centre: Fighter Command control at Bentley Priory. During the battle, several Coastal Command and Fleet Air Arm units came under Fighter Command control.