The Battle Of Britain: The Dowding System

Summary

WW2 Pod: We Have Ways Of Making You Talk

Episode: The Battle Of Britain: The Dowding System

Date: September 17, 2025
Hosts: Al Murray (comedian & WWII enthusiast), James Holland (historian & author)

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Episode Overview

This episode forms part of the Battle of Britain series and focuses on the Dowding System—the integrated air defense network that underpinned Britain's survival in 1940. Al and James discuss the origins, technology, structure, and impact of the Dowding System, comparing it with the Luftwaffe's approach, and expanding into how Britain’s organizational and technological edge helped counter numerical and tactical disadvantages.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why the Dowding System Was Revolutionary

• Verbatim Biggin Hill Ops-Room Recreation: The episode opens with a dramatic reconstruction of an RAF control room in action, highlighting real-time decision-making and communications ([01:48]–[03:13]).

  • “Tally ho, tally ho. A gaggle of Heinkels with 109s dead ahead.” — Real radio chatter

• Main Point:

  • Britain's "system" was the world's first integrated air defense, designed to defeat the interwar assumption that "the bomber will always get through."

2. Origins & Invention of RDF (Radio Direction Finding)

• Not "Radar":

  • “Don’t. It’s not radar. Radar is an American acronym...It is radio direction finding.” – Al ([04:33])
  • Explains British obsession with terminologies and tech innovation roots in science fiction.

• The Death Ray Myth:

  • “There's a guy at this time going around offering a death ray that can kill a sheep at 30 paces...” – Al ([04:44])
  • Joke about government officials standing in front of unproven "death rays" ([05:31])

• From Science Quest to Government Investment:

  • The Tizard Committee, led by Henry Tizard, investigates the death ray, but Robert Watson Watt steers them towards detection by radio waves, not destruction ([06:11]–[06:33]).

3. Development and Deployment of RDF Stations

• Early successes detecting aircraft over the Suffolk coast, expansion into the "Chain Home" network by 1936–1937 ([08:49]–[09:42]).
• Two main types:
  • Chain Home for high-level aircraft
  • Chain Home Low for low-flying threats ([10:13]–[11:04])
• “By the autumn of 1939, you've got Chain Home and Chain Home Low in place, which is incredible given the radar testing... just three or four years previously.” – Al ([10:35])

4. Information Flow: The Human and Tech Network Behind the System

• Filter Room at Bentley Priory:

  • Central collection of RDF, plotting, and distribution to command and group-level ops rooms ([12:33]–[12:45]).

• Observer Corps (Later Royal Observer Corps):

  • 1,000 observation posts by July 1940, using basic optical devices and phones—essential for tracking after German planes crossed the coast. Staffed mostly by trained volunteers ([14:16]–[15:25])
  • “It's an extraordinary system, isn't it?” – James ([14:16])

• Operations Rooms Structure:

  • Hierarchical design: national (Bentley Priory) > group > sector-level rooms (Biggin Hill, Duxford, etc.)
  • Visual plotting with big maps and "tote boards" for instant understanding of the battlespace ([17:57]–[21:25])

• "Redundancy" and Standardization:

  • Standardized ops rooms, equipment, and terminology, making training and personnel rotation seamless ([21:25]–[21:32])
  • “Scramble, Scramble. Sounds exactly the same. Scramble orbit vector 2, 3 1, 2, 3, 0. Angels, bandits, snappers...” – Al ([21:32])
  • “It's standardized, but it's flexible.” – James ([21:26])

5. Communications and Redundancy

• Technical Innovations:
  • High Frequency Direction Finding (Huff Duff), automatic location transmitters (Pipsqueak), and the General Post Office’s massive cable-laying and network support ([19:34], [22:31])
• Civilian Infrastructure's Role:
  • “The GPO pull their weight in the Second World War...not only are they supplying all of this system with communications cable, but Tommy Flower invents the Colossus, for Christ's sake.” – Al ([22:31])

6. Aircraft Production, Repair, and Pilot Training

• Pilot Training Bottlenecks:

  • It took ~9 months to train pilots; attrition was high, and the RAF had lost hundreds in France ([27:34]–[29:45]).
  • “Of the hundred people you may have on the first parade to fly...you're whittling down to half that number probably by the time they're getting into single-engine fighter planes.” – Al ([28:19])

• Aircraft Supply and Lord Beaverbrook:

  • Government-led “shadow factories”; Lord Beaverbrook appointed to turbocharge production ([30:52])
  • Beaverbrook’s tactics: ruthless prioritization of fighter production, sacking ineffective managers, direct communication, and tireless work ethic ([33:51]–[34:33])
  • “He makes what's in place work, basically.” – Al ([34:33])
  • Massive increases in output and rapid repair through Civilian Repair Organization ([35:23]–[36:54])
  • “Repaired aircraft has risen by 186%. That's amazing.” – Al ([36:54])

7. Aircraft Technical Comparisons and Battle Lessons

• British Fighters:

  • Hurricane: Workhorse, stable gun platform, but with design vulnerabilities (fabric covering, easy to stall, dangerous fuel tank placements) ([37:13]–[38:29])

  • Spitfire: More advanced; tight turning, faster climb with propeller upgrades, but limited by carburetor issues ([39:21]–[40:41])

  • Both used .303 rifle-caliber machine guns: too light, with limited firing time (14.7 seconds per sortie) ([41:20])

  • “One of the great vast mysteries of the Air Ministry's decision-making process is to equip its intercept fighter aircraft with such poor weaponry.” – Al ([41:20])

• Luftwaffe Fighters:

  • ME 109:
    • “At this point, it just is [better]... could climb faster, dive faster, and pack a greater punch in the combat zone.” – Tom Neal, quoted by James ([48:58])
    • Cannon/ heavier armament, more firing time.
  • ME 110: Two engines, long range, good armament but poor maneuverability, vulnerable to British fighters ([52:11])

• Bombers & Stuka:

  • German reliance on medium bombers (Heinkel 111, Dornier 17, Ju 88) with limited payloads and inadequately suited for the demands of the campaign.
  • Stuka—great for battlefield support, but exposed in the UK setting ([53:28]–[54:27])

8. Comparing Systems: British Integration vs German Disarray

• German Approach:

  • Rigid, less coordinated: Separate developments (Kriegsmarine not sharing with Luftwaffe).
  • Limited radio use and insufficient ground control: "There's no ground control at all." – Al ([44:10])
  • Over-claiming losses and inability to grasp the scale/nature of Dowding’s system ([57:01])

• Luftwaffe Strength and Shortcomings:

  • “The Luftwaffe is a tactical air force, not a strategic air force… they've not thought about anything else.” – Al ([47:09])
  • Inflated authorized strength masked operational unavailability: “Authorized strength 1638… combat ready 818…combat ready with air crew 700–800.” – James ([56:41])
  • Attrition in August-September 1940 wiped out entire operational bomber crews, “they lose the lot.” – Al ([57:01])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On RDF Technology's Roots:

  • “Radio is, at this point, newer than the Internet is to us... Radio is literally just being created and discovered and its potential.” – Al ([04:49])

• On Standardization & Training:

  • “Everyone's trained in this system. Everyone's trained in a way that everyone’s got redundancy built into them is the thing.” – Al ([20:25])

• On Standardization and Flexibility:

  • “It's standardized, but it's flexible.” – James ([21:26])
  • “The big idea... anyone can work anywhere in the system.” – Al ([21:25])

• On British Downplaying Air Ministry Mistakes:

  • “One of the great vast mysteries...is to equip its intercept fighter aircraft with such poor weaponry.” – Al ([41:20])

• On the Importance of Distilling Lessons:

  • “This is the fruit of the Spanish Civil War and Poland and their experience with what they need to fine-tune on the fighters, so that's why they're into their fifth type at this point in the war.” – Al ([50:07])

• On Luftwaffe’s Tactical Limitations:

  • “The mission has to take place according to instructions or else you're on your own.” – James ([44:33])
  • “If he attacks the wrong airfield, they all attack the wrong airfield. If he fails to meet up with the bombers he's meant to be escorting, they all fail.” – Al ([44:45])

• How the Luftwaffe Failed to Understand the British System:

  • "It’s starting its battle seriously disadvantaged...The Germans don’t even appreciate [the Dowding System] exists." – James ([55:45])

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Useful Timestamps & Segments

• Biggin Hill Ops-Room Recreation: [01:48]–[03:13]
• RDF/Chain Home Origins: [04:33]–[11:04]
• Filter Room and Observer Corps Explainer: [12:33]–[15:25]
• Ops Room Structure/Standardization: [17:57]–[21:32]
• Aircraft/Production & Lord Beaverbrook: [30:52]–[36:54]
• Aircraft Technical/Combat Comparisons: [37:13]–[47:09]
• Luftwaffe Weaknesses/Ops Structure: [46:27]–[51:11]
• Battle Order of Battle & Attrition Math: [55:45]–[58:14]

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Summary

This episode offers a masterclass in how technical, organizational, and cultural factors combined to give the RAF a decisive edge in a time of existential crisis. The British Dowding System was a world-first, built on fresh technology (RDF), standardized and redundant communications and ops, and a culture of empirical testing. The Luftwaffe, despite numerical and technical strengths in certain aircraft, was undermined by lack of ground control, confused priorities, and chronic over-claiming. Al and James’s wit and detail makes this a gripping listen—and a must for any WWII enthusiast.

Preview for Next Episode:
The next episode tackles Adler Angriff: the Attack of the Eagles—Phase 2 of the Battle of Britain.

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“So we've looked at Canal Camp, we've looked at phase one of the Battle of Britain...Now we are getting ready for Adler Angriff...That’s what we’re going to be looking at in episode three.” – James ([58:27])

Transcript

[Al Murray]

Thank you for listening to we have ways of making you talk. Sign up to our Patreon to receive bonus content, live streams and our weekly newsletter with money off books and museum visits as well. Plus early access to all live show tickets. That's patreon.com we haveways.

[James Holland]

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[Al Murray]

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[Al Murray]

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[Al Murray]

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[James Holland]

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[Al Murray]

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[James Holland]

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[Al Murray]

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[James Holland]

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[Al Murray]

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[James Holland]

Observer Corps, this is Biggin Hill Controller. Yes, it is a bit hectic. Group think they're making for us, so keep your tracks going, will you? You're doing very well at the moment. Now ops B, I want you to ring all dispersals and tell them to get everything into the air that's a serviceable. I don't want any aircraft to be caught on the ground.

[Al Murray]

Right away, sir.

[James Holland]

Group controller, big in here. Sir, I've ordered all other serviceable aircraft into the air as it looks pretty certain now that these raids are heading for us. By the way, sir, I did tell you that our three squadrons are airborne, right? Thank you, sir. Sergeant Brice, how about 72 Squadron? Have they had any joy yet?

[Al Murray]

Not yet, sir. They're very close. Any moment now, I think. Hello, short Jack. Tennis leader calling. Tally ho, tally ho. A gaggle of Heinkels with 1:09 stead ahead. Hell. Tennis squadron B flight, take the bombers. A flight, take the fighters with me. A flight, line astern goes guns.

[James Holland]

Tennis squadron are now engaging hostile 132. So warn the guns of friendly fighters, will you? How about 32 Squadron, Sergeant Norris? Are they into the others yet?

[Al Murray]

Nearly there, sir. Hello, Keetoleader. Bandits. 12 o' clock 15 miles an hour, heading north. Watch out for top flight. Fighter cover. This is Keter leader. Understood. No joy yet. Keep your eyes skinned, chaps, and don't straggle. Hello, shortjack. Keter leader calling telly ho. Tally ho. Hell of a lot of Heinkels and Yuga's 88s with fighter escort. Wow. That's why we were there, Jim.

[James Holland]

I don't know about you, I was transported. Weren't you? Yeah. Yeah.

[Al Murray]

Welcome to. We have ways of making you talk with me, Al Murray and James Holland and our Battle of Britain series. Tennis Leader out.

[James Holland]

Anyway, that's a verbatim transcript of Biggin Hill ops room. During one particular day in September 1940.

[Al Murray]

Exactly, you hear a snapshot of how the system works and what's going on and what the raf, the British have come up with, which is a way of directing people to the action to intercept because after all, the bomber will always get through, is the motto of the 1930s. But the British Fighter Command have devised a way to make sure that that isn't the case.

[James Holland]

Well, yes. So in terms of preparation for this big Adler angriff, the clash of the eagles that's going to come, there's two major areas of preparation for the raf. First is the air defence system and the second is processing enough pilots and aircraft. And in this episode we're to look at both those things for the raf and we're also going to see what the Luftwaffe is doing on the other side of the Channel as well. So the system, it's important because it's the world's first. That's the bottom line. I think the interesting thing is at the beginning of July, it's still kind of largely untested, isn't it? But the point is it's got lots and lots of different components and perhaps the first one to consider is rdf. And you've told me off many times about this. Don't.

[Al Murray]

It's not radar. It's not radar. Radar is an American acronym that comes in later in the war. It's anachronistic to call it radar. It is radio direction finding. It has such an amazing genesis, this technology, doesn't it?

[James Holland]

Because there's death rays involved. That's what I'm going to say. It's just amazing.

[Al Murray]

Well, exactly. It's a direct product to science fiction. Because radio, after all, is brand new. Radio is, at this point is newer than the Internet is to us. Right. You know, we've had the Internet a couple of decades now. Radio is literally just being Created and discovered and its potential. You know, the government doesn't want there to be a BBC because they want to use radio for themselves, themselves for military purposes, all this sort of thing. So this is great sort of science fictiony thing around radio and radio waves and there's a guy at this time who's going around offering a death ray that can kill a sheep at 30 paces and explode machinery and all thing. So there is, there is an occasion.

[James Holland]

He'S a splendid fellow where a civil.

[Al Murray]

Servant has to stand in front of the death ray and it's fired at him because nothing happens to doing.

[James Holland]

It's so funny.

[Al Murray]

But what this results in is the director of the scientific research at Scientific Research department of the Air Ministry, a fellow called Harold Wimpress, has a committee.

[James Holland]

This is also funny. He's the sort of person you expect to be a scientific civil servant.

[Al Murray]

Absolutely. And he sets up a committee under the physicist Henry Tizard to investigate the possibilities offered by science for air defense. And they do consider the possibility of the death ray.

[James Holland]

I just think, now look here, Watson Watts, we've heard about this, there's this chap here who's claiming he's created a death ray. What do you think of that? I think that's probably unlikely.

[Al Murray]

Exactly.

[James Holland]

Is Robert Watson Watts response. But Robert Watson Watts says what? He says well you know, I might not have got a death ray but I do think there is a way of, of using radio wave reflections to detect rather than destroy aircraft. And he puts forward these theories on detection and location of aircraft by radio methods to the Tizard committee.

[Al Murray]

And he's already been involved in what becomes basically transponders in ships and stuff that's been invented already where you can use radio waves to triangulate the position of already receivers, triangulate the position of ships and stuff which has obviously got a military application to come. This is right on the edge of what technology is capable. Absolutely cutting edge. And he says that, you know, you send out a shortwave radio pulse, bounces back, you catch that, you measure how long that takes, you measure the, you know, you triangulate with more than one station you can figure out where something is, how fast it's moving, roughly how high it is and all this stuff because it's these.

[James Holland]

And you can track this on a cathode ray tube.

[Al Murray]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. A television screen. In fact when they test it they use a BBC shortwave radio transmission because the BBC is brand new. It has an aerial because they need an aerial. Once they've got the Money. In February of 1935, a pilot from RAF Hayford flies along a railway line to a point 20 miles away. And then he comes back again. They don't get in the first time.

[James Holland]

But he does it a few more times.

[Al Murray]

Yeah, they catch him, they track him. And the guy running this, in charge of all of this, overseeing this is Hugh Dowding, who is RAF through and through fellow, who's clearly, he's looking at the science. And the thing about. We've got to remember the RAF at this point is, what, 17 years old in 1935, it's looking for a role in peacetime. They've had success with dealing with colonial policing using aircraft. There's all the talk of bombers, but this is the RAF beginning to get whiff of what? Well, what can we do about the bombers? What can we do to defend? And Dowding is absolutely central.

[James Holland]

Yes, because if the bomber's always going to get through, which after all, Stanley Baldwin, prime minister, said in 1932. But anyway, you know, he said it before this point. So if the bomber's always going to get through, how do you make sure that it doesn't get through? Which is why Dowding at the time is air marshal and is the man at the Air Ministry in charge of research and development and scientific research. There's lots of people coming up with wacky ideas, whether it be death rays or whatever, and you can't just sort of chuck, throw lots of money at all sorts of things. So this pilot flying from RAF Hayford near Daventry to do this first test is basically to see whether it is worth backing. And when it works, that's when the money is forthcoming. And so Watson Watt, Robert Watson Watt, who's invented, is told to set himself up on the Suffolk coast at a place called BAWDSEY, and within six months, he can detect aircraft 40 miles out to sea.

[Al Murray]

Amazing, isn't it?

[James Holland]

But the big thing is, is that one radio mast can't assess the bearing, so more radio masks are needed. And this allows the simple geometry to work out the bearing of an aircraft, you know, on which it's heading. So then five RDF stations are ordered and by 1936 aircraft are being detected 62 miles away. So this is getting better and better and better, and there's lots of snags and it takes time and Downing's getting impatient and why can't we get this all sorted out quicker? But an RDF training school is set up at Bawdsey in early 1937, and Bawdsey opens operationally in May that year as well. And so suddenly you've got the Dover Chain home following in July 1937 and then Canoeden in August. So suddenly you've got three chains on what has become Chain Home. And Fighter Command exercises can start that month, you know, in late August 1937.

[Al Murray]

Yeah. Getting out there, testing it, seeing how it works, reacting to things, the whole thing. Because this is all about directing the fighters to the bombers before the bombers get to wherever they're going. It's the important things to strike them before the bombs land. If you're defending England, that's what you've do. It's by no means perfect. And if you're thinking of a radar rather than rdf, then you're probably thinking of something or maybe a thing spinning round and round and round and round. It's none of that. It's sort of pylons with. With cables strung between them, sending out this short wave.

[James Holland]

Oh, they're 360 foot high.

[Al Murray]

It's extraordinary, these great big masts with antenna wires and then receiving masts that catch the reflected signal. They don't work over land, which is a bit of a drawback, as we might.

[James Holland]

Well, they work in the direction in which they're pointing. They work in an arc in front.

[Al Murray]

Of them, so you're pointing them out.

[James Holland]

So if you put them on the coast and you point, then you point them out to sea, then that's the arc. There's a sort of concentric ring. Yeah, pulses.

[Al Murray]

And you've got enough overlapping. It means that when an aircraft is sending echoes to three or four of these stations, you can actually figure out exactly where it is. Then the second one, which is a Chain Home Low, which is to cover the possibility of aircraft flying in low under the main Chain Home transmission. It's more like a searchlight. But basically this means by the autumn of 1939, you've got chain Home and Chain Home Low in place, which is incredible given the radar testing. You know, RRDF testing is three years, four years previously. It's extraordinary.

[James Holland]

Well, and the interesting thing is that Chain Home Low has a shorter range, but it's actually more detailed, it's more accurate. So actually, together they work pretty well, because Chain Home, the big tall masts, they can do their kind of, you know, 120 miles or whatever. And then Chain Home Low picks them up as they're closing to the. Towards the coast and offers a bit more detail, really. Chain Home Low is only implemented in the autumn of 1939, which is why Dowding is a bit sort of apprehensive about everything because this is all running quite close to the wire, to put it mildly.

[Al Murray]

This is all part of Chamberlain's Fortress Britain build up, is that you, you make Britain impregnable as a deterrent to the German by the summer. Dowding's really pushed hard to make sure that this gets done and that red tape gets cut. And he's really like a dog with a bone about this. There is a system basically in place in the nick of time, right?

[James Holland]

Yeah, but this is the point. You know, the war has begun and they're still honing, still creating more radar stations, RDF stations. It is not the finished article in September 1939. This is like sort of putting on a play and the set is still being painted on the morning of the first performance. But the other point is that by the third week of June, when the strategic earthquake happens and France is surrendering, it hasn't really been tested. And radar, rdf, radio direction finding is only one part of the cog in this complex system. So we should talk about the other parts that make the system the system because it's not just RDF detection alone. Yeah. So key to this is the filter.

[Al Murray]

Room, which is, I mean it's very interesting this, that everything in the whole of chain home, in the whole of chain, hello. Goes to one place. The entire chain goes to one single facility at Bentley Priory in west northwest.

[James Holland]

London near Stanmore, which is the headquarters of Fighter Command. Yeah.

[Al Murray]

Which is actually the ahq. And they've got a great big map table like in the movies.

[James Holland]

Right.

[Al Murray]

And a daisy colored rings spreading out from each of the radar, the RDF chains. You made me do it now, Jim. You made me say radar. Each of the RDF chains and each station is given a different number. And that way, as the enemy aircraft approach, they can plot them with the rings. They update the info continually. They range cut, as it's called, where. What they do is they triangulate on the basis of the information as they're getting it. The height, the speed, the expected number of size of the formation and all.

[James Holland]

The different radar chains. RDF chains have a different color.

[Al Murray]

Yeah, exactly.

[James Holland]

And they all cross over and interconnect like a big Venn diagram, don't they?

[Al Murray]

You can plot the bombers before it gets through. But then there's the next stage because as we said, this only looks out to sea. So once the aircraft are in land. Oh, well, once they're within the view of the, of the coast, what happens next? You've got the high tech, the ultimate high tech of the rdf chain home, chain low. And then you've got the Mark 1 eyeball, basically in the form of the observer corps, which is people looking at the planes, taking, with a sort of theodolite, with a kind of think like a sextant.

[James Holland]

A pantograph.

[Al Murray]

Yes, they call it a pantograph, don't they, which marks on a chart exactly where you, where these aircraft are. And every single one of these observer corps stations, you know, has been properly actually surveyed and marked so they know exactly where it is. And they're roughly kind of every five miles. It means that you can by sight track the aircraft as they come in. It's an extraordinary system, isn't it?

[James Holland]

It really is. And by beginning of July 1940, there's 1,000 observer corps posts and 30,000 observers. They're all volunteers. They trained in the evenings, even though they've been mobilized, obviously on 24 August 1939. From then on they're expected to mount 24 hour manning of the post. But they do come under the direct control of the Air Ministry and pay has been introduced. But apart from tin hats, they don't have any uniform, not until 1941, when actually that's when they finally become the Royal Observer Corps. 1940. They are just the Observer Corps and each are divided into groups. So each group has a number of posts with concentric rings around the post which then overlap with the neighbours. So each part of the sky is covered by more than one post and each post is given a letter and a number, such as sort of, I don't know, R2, B7, J3, whatever it might be. There's usually 30 to 34 posts in a group and each is manned by 14 to 20 observers on rotation to ensure around the clock coverage. And each post has its own little hut with a telephone, pair of binoculars, tea making facilities, obviously really important. And this pantograph, this theodolite thing that you were talking about. And so they're literally everywhere and everyone's.

[Al Murray]

Seen the image of it, someone with a binos, with a tin hat on, in his civvies, surrounded by sandbags dug in position normally, yeah. And then someone looking through the, through the pantograph, taking the bearing on the aircraft and they get the elevation and then they get the eyes on and try and count the number of aircraft. It's sort of as simple as that. But that information is also sent on to the filter room. So that's added to the information that they're gathering, right?

[James Holland]

Yeah. So each post sends its information to its group center. So the Observer Corps group, which is then forwarded to the operations rooms, both at Bentley Priory. The command, you know, the headquarters of Fighter Command, the group headquarters, such as 11 group, 12 group, 10 group, 13 group, and the sector stations of which we'll get onto in a minute. The Observer Corps can manage over a million different reports in a 24 hour period. And it's updated all the time. That's the point. But obviously there has to be a place where this information is collated. So you've got the information from the RDF chain going to the filter room. The filter room then passes that out to the operations room. And the key thing about the operations room is these are standardized. And you would have operations rooms at Fighter Command headquarters at Bentley Priory. You also have them at group level headquarters and at sector level. So Fighter Command divides the land mass of Great Britain into groups. So there's 11 group, which we've talked about before, which is southeast England and London. There's 12 group, which is central England. There's 10 group, which is southwest England. And then 13 group is the northern England and Scotland. Then these groups are then divided into sectors. So each sector would have a main sector station which would be at a large airfield such as Biggin Hill or Duxford. These airfields then have satellite airfields. So each sector station has an operations room, just as the group headquarters has an operations room and just as Bentley Priory has an operations room. And they're all based on the absolute same design. So there is a dais, a sort of, you know, a raised platform on which the controller sits with his fellow controllers. There's a large map table below and a tote board on the wall opposite. And it's called a tote board because it looks like one of those betting boards that they have at the races. And it's a visual map of the sky from which huge amount of information can be seen at a glance. That's the point. So plots of enemy and friendly aircraft are moved onto the map table on the wall opposite. On the tote board is the squadron readiness, with colored lights for each section. Blue, red, yellow and green. And then the plots are moved by plotters. These are usually WAFs, so female members of the RAF, known rather misogynistically as the Beauty Chorus.

[Al Murray]

This then means that the controllers, once they've decided what they're going to do with the aircraft they've got, they speak directly to the pilots, and the pilots speak directly to each other using Rad telegraphy. The different squadrons can't speak to one another. So that means. But the controller can speak to everyone, essentially.

[James Holland]

No, the controller. Controller can speak to the. To the squadrons in his. In his sector.

[Al Murray]

Yes, that's right. So what you have is this extraordinary system that is centralized and evolved at the same time. There is extraordinary redundancy built into this and flexibility. And of course, for every control room, there is a substitute control room for if anything goes wrong. But the point is, is that you have this redundancy centralized yet devolved information system for vectoring planes onto the bombers. That's how it works. That's how it's designed to work, and that's how it works.

[James Holland]

Well, yes. And for those of you who were listening to the opening bit of verbatim recording that we had, you had the controller talking to Cater leader and tennis leader. So he is talking to two different squadron leaders at the same time. And that's what you can do. And it's really, really clever because pilots have the, have the radio which enables them to listen to the ground controllers. But there's also further networks of antennae, radio receivers on the ground picking up transmissions from the pilot. So cables run from these antennae to the operations rooms where on yet another cathode ray tube, we really need lots of those. The direction of the transmission can be picked up. So with the receivers at the center of the screen, a line would then light up from the transmissions from the pilot, which would then indicate what bearing he was on. This is known as High Frequency Direction Finding, or hfdf, better known as Huff Duff. Huff Duff.

[Al Murray]

This is the military application of the thing Watson Watt had invented for ships in the interwar years. This is exactly that. What you're doing is you're keeping track of people's radio transmissions and triangulating them wherever they go, as well as the Observer Corps having its eyes on a squadron and relaying what it's seeing. So as well as the Huff Duff telling you where people are, you've got Observer Corps eyes on. So that. So the idea is. And you've got Pipsqueak, which is the course, sending out the automatic transm. So basically the idea is, once you know where the bombers are and if they change course, you can carry on vectoring your fighters because you know where your fighters are, onto that bomber force or onto the enemy aircraft.

[James Holland]

But it's amazing that you can do this through the combination of Pipsqueak, which is this transmission, which gets pulsed out every 14 seconds, but you can also do it from Huff Duff, you know, so. So it's like a. Again, it's more redundancy, you know, it's. There's extra means of finding these guys.

[Al Murray]

Everyone's trained in this system. Everyone's trained in a way that everyone's got redundancy built into them is the thing.

[James Holland]

Everyone knows what they got to do.

[Al Murray]

Everyone knows what they got to do.

[James Holland]

There's about eight people on a sector ops room dire. So you have the senior control at the center who's controlling the squadrons in the air in his sector. So, you know, that might be three airborne at one time, it might be two, as in the case of the example that we had at the beginning of this episode, where it might be four. And then he has an assistant controller next to him and two deputy controllers. And either side of them is Ops A and Ops B. You may remember again that we had Ops A and Ops B in that opening bit. And they're ringing through to squadron dispersal. You then on the weather board opposite, underneath the squadron readiness, you have the weather, you have the height of cloud, you have list of barrage balloon squadrons, and you also have lists of pilots and planes available at that moment to each squadron. So it really is a sort of incredibly huge amount of information that you can just see at a glance. And the great point about it is, doesn't matter where you are, you know, you can be in Drem, near Edinburgh, or you could be in Biggin Hill. It's all the same. That's the point.

[Al Murray]

That's the big idea.

[James Holland]

It's standardized, but it's flexible. Yeah.

[Al Murray]

And the language is standardized as well, which is really interesting.

[James Holland]

Yeah.

[Al Murray]

Scramble, Scramble. Sounds exactly the same. Scramble orbit vector 2, 3 1, 2, 3, 0. Angels, bandits, snappers. These are all words and phrases devised to be broadcast through. Not necessarily brilliant rt, isn't it, Jim?

[James Holland]

Well, apart from three, you don't have a th anywhere. That's the point. You know, you don't have words. And that could be mistaken for something else. Yeah, but that's not all.

[Al Murray]

Another transmitter in all RAF aircraft that gives off a thing that. The rd, like a radar reflector that basically. Well, when they come on the rdf, it's obvious they're an RAF aircraft. That comes on online as the Battle of Britain goes, doesn't it? It's not all in place at the start, but it's a thing they've got yet another thing that they've got up their sleeve. It's absolutely extraordinary, the technological effort here. And then the General Post Office, of course, the GPO pull their weight in the Second World War. Not only are they supplying all of this system with communications cable, but Tommy Flower invents the Colossus, for Christ's sake. So you know, and he's a. He works the gpo.

[James Holland]

What the heck, as soon as the RDF chain is, is starting to be in place they're thinking cracky. Okay, well we've got to get. There's no point having this information coming if we can't then get it out beyond the RDF chain. So we're gonna have to phone it through. So that requires lots of telephone cable to these pretty remote places. So huge amounts of telephone cable are laid again with plenty of redundancy as well. Lines have to be connected to neighboring stations and to Bentley priories. Everything then goes through the Stanmore Exchange, which is at the bottom of the hill beneath Bentley Priory. But they also have a backup exchange. Take note of this Heathrow Airport at Bushey Exchange as well. So. And that's not all either, is it Al? Because they also have the Defence teleprinter network, the dtn, which is exactly what it says. It's a teleprinter that links and serves all three RAF commands but is also maintained by the GPOS.

[Al Murray]

And there's also Anti Aircraft Command with, with 1204 heavy and 581 light anti aircraft guns, which isn't the compliment they're meant to have. And there's barrage balloons. There's the. The Admiralty also has its eyes on all of this stuff. But basically what you have is this, this system which has great flexibility built into it. Standard. The flexibility comes from the standardization. I think what's brilliant about it, it may all look the same, but that's exactly the point because then anyone can work anywhere in the system. So if a station's knocked out, you can bring in personnel from somewhere else, replace them instantly. And anyway, there's a reserve ops room as well. So the whole point, it's completely interchangeable, completely flexible. But it's untested is the truth. At the start of July 1940.

[James Holland]

So too flexibility for the pilots as well, because you can, you can move pilots again From Scotland to 12 group to 11 group to 10 group. You can move them from Exeter to Hawkins to Doxford to Acklington, you know, in a day and everything standardized. The way they're organized, the way these, these airfields is organized, they're all exactly the same. And so that's key to the whole thing. And it means you can rotate squadrons and operations staff at the same time or separately or in any way how you like. But. But you're right, you know, it is untested at the beginning of July. This is brand spanking new technology. No one's ever put this, no one has ever developed an air defense system. It is the world's first fully functioning air defense system. There was nothing like this over Poland, nothing like this over Scandinavia, the Low Countries or in France. Which is why the Luftwaffe have got a bit cocky, to be put it mildly. And this is why when Gunther Rall from JG52 was was flying over Dover and was suddenly being attacked by 501 and 64 Squadron, he couldn't understand where they came from. That's because he's never come up against that air defence system before.

[Al Murray]

In the next part we will look at other elements that go into the British air defence system. The aircraft, aircraft repair, aircra pilot training. Because there are so many cogs in this incredible machine that we can't squeeze them all into one part. We'll see in a moment. Heather is a nurse practitioner from UnitedHealthcare.

[James Holland]

We meet patients wherever they live.

[Al Murray]

During a house call she found Jack had an issue.

[James Holland]

Jack's blood pressure was dangerously high. It was 217 over 110.

[Al Murray]

So they got Jack to the hospital and got him the help he needed.

[James Holland]

He had had a stamp placed in his hole heart preventing a massive heart attack.

[Al Murray]

If it wasn't for my guardian angel, I wouldn't be here. Hear more stories like Jack's at unitedhealthcare.com benefits, features and or devices vary by plan.

[James Holland]

Area limitation and exclusions apply. This episode is brought to you by kpmg. Making an Impact is how KPMG helps make the difference. KPMG applies advanced tools and strategic thinking to convert data into actionable knowledge and deliver value by improving performance through transformation. Modernizing processes with technology, harnessing the power of data, navigating complex MA transactions and enhancing trust among stakeholders. Go to KPMG US Advisory to learn more. KPMG MAKE the Difference.

[Al Murray]

Tron.

[James Holland]

Ares has arrived.

[Al Murray]

I would like you to meet Ares, the ultimate AI soldier. He is biblically strong and supremely intelligent.

[James Holland]

You think you're in control of this? You're not. On October 10th, what are you? My world is coming to destroy yours. But I can help you.

[Al Murray]

The war for our world begins in IMAX. Tron Ares, rated PG13 may be inappropriate for children under 13. Only in theaters October 10th. Get tickets now. Welcome back to we have Ways that make youe Talk With Me. Al Murray And James Holland. And for the sharp eared amongst you who aren't watching this in our new video format, we'll notice that the, that the sound has changed slightly for part two. And those of you watching will have.

[James Holland]

Realized we've, we've, we've done a Rent a Ghost. We've held our nose and blinked.

[Al Murray]

Exactly. We evaporated elsewhere for the Harry Potter fan. Right. So we looked at the, we've looked at the dowding system and the complexity of it, but also the sort of forethought that's gone into it. But none of this will work without pilots, right?

[James Holland]

Or planes.

[Al Murray]

Or planes.

[James Holland]

Yeah, exactly. So processing a pilots is quite a thing. And you know, the bottom line is you can only train so many. Certainly only train so many in a normal northern European country.

[Al Murray]

Yeah.

[James Holland]

Which is the same for both sides. But of course the littor of have started earlier. So that's the problem. It's weather dependent and, and yes, you can train 3, 6, 5, you know, 24, 7 and all that kind of stuff, but you can't really because when the weather comes in, which it does tend to, and as everyone knows, winters weren't great at that time of our history, you know, that restricts what you can do. And training takes about nine months.

[Al Murray]

Well and training is incredibly intense. It's lengthy and also quite fallible and people are falling by the wayside, the who whole time. So not only is this very, very time consuming, but it's people consuming because you have people coming in to the RAF who then don't make the grade.

[James Holland]

Because well, they don't make the grade and they also kill themselves. Well, and people killing themselves doubly don't make the grade.

[Al Murray]

But, but, but this, you know, emphasizes the sort of the danger at the core of it as well as also of the hundred people you may have on the first parade to fly you, you, you're whittling down to half that number probably by the time, by the time they're getting into single engine fighter planes on squadrons.

[James Holland]

Ye dangerous things of all is when you go to your otu. So how it works is you do initial training wing. You do initial training. Yeah, that's square mashing and all the rest of it and bit of book, you know, learning, learning stuff in the classroom. Then you do your first flights and all the rest of it, then you do secondary training, then you finally get your wings if you're good enough. And lots of people don't. Yeah, this is your point. And if you have survived that long and that Includes sort of unbelievably terrifying kind of night flights and things where you're blinded by the kind of, you know, the exhaust fuse when you. Yeah, you know, the exhaust stubborn, some flame coming out of it when, when you first fire it up. And then you go to your otu, your operational training unit, which is where you convert from, say, Harvard's, which you've been doing the last bit of your training on, which, by the way, are also incredibly dangerous. But then you go to your operational training where you would then be converted onto Spitfires or Hurricanes. And that moment, you know, they are single engine, single pilot aircraft and it's a leap of faith, you're going from a sort of 400 horsepower aircraft to. To, you know, 1100. Yeah, it's quite a big leap and you've got to take off in it, fly it around, stooge about for a bit and then land. So shortage of pilots, this most precious of all commodities, is a problem. And it's particularly a problem because they've lost about 300 of them in France.

[Al Murray]

And then having enough airframes is also obviously really, really important.

[James Holland]

Yes.

[Al Murray]

Because, I mean, we've touched on it really there. The pilots are the thing that is truly irreplaceable airframes, though, if you can keep the production numbers up, if you can keep the churn going, you're probably going to be all right. If you can keep the attrition rate under control. So this is the balancing act that's really, really important. And the Chamberlain government has already initiated a series of shadow factories. Yes, it's boosting production. I mean, it's buying the fighters in the first place, stimulating industry by.

[James Holland]

Well, yes, and it's also Vickers Aviation buying out Supermarine. That's all happened beforehand. So you've got a bigger conglomeration, you know, bigger enterprise. Yeah, controlling it. I mean, you know, the naysayers that say, oh, it wasn't anything to do with Lord Beaverbrook, it was all to do with Lord Swinton, who came before all the rest of it. That just isn't true. I mean, it is true that Swinton plays a huge part in all this, but the person who really kickstarts massive production is unquestionably Lord Beaverbrook, who is appointed to the head of the new Ministry of Aircraft Production, which is brand new, hasn't been created because aircraft production has been in the hands of the Air Ministry up until this point.

[Al Murray]

I mean, he's an astonishing appointment, though. I mean, people don't know who Beaverbrook is. Beaverbrook is a Canadian press baron who's made his money in the world of finance in Canada before he comes to London because it's the imperial centre. And he was a real thorn in the side of the government during the First World War with his newspapers really driving stuff and leaping onto causes and causing the Liberal government all sorts of problems during the First World War.

[James Holland]

Yeah, it's fair to say that he's sort of right of center.

[Al Murray]

Yeah, well, and he's an absolutely imperialist, Die hard imperialist. The thing he cares about is the British Empire and he cares about the British Empire because he's Canadian. It's the one thing that will keep the Americans down. So he's very much, much of that stripe of imperialist. But he's a pal of Churchill, he's.

[James Holland]

A Palace Churchill, he's a businessman. And Churchill wants to have his. He wants the people running the war effort to be a bunch of technocrats and his cronies. And you know, he's very sensible in that approach. I mean, you know, it's not entirely democratic perhaps, but it's a very sensible approach. I mean the other thing I'd say about Lord Swinton is Lord Swinton and the Air Ministry before them have also built up huge supplies of aluminium and steel and perspective. So they've got a lot of the stuff in place. The big thing that Max Biber book does is that he turbocharges the aircraft production. So everything's in place. But what it needs is it needs rocket fuel to go in and just go, okay, we've got all the tools now we just need to make it happen. That's what he provides, this incredible scale of energy. He also immediately says, right, you forget any other type. We're going to produce five types. Everything else will just be mothballed for the time being. Which has longer term consequences for say the Lancaster. Yeah, four engine heavy bombers and the Mosquito and all the rest of it. But it's about what do we need to do now? We need to streamline this.

[Al Murray]

But it's quite interesting though because there's a fundamental difference here between say Germany and Britain at this point is he can say that, but what will actually happen in Britain is a load of people go, well we've been told to pause this tight, but you know what, we'll, we'll just keep trickling along because the jet engine is one of the, one of the things where he says stop on that, but it trickles away, it trickles away. Rolls Royce makes sure they carry on with that.

[James Holland]

Work and keep that. Yeah, exactly.

[Al Murray]

Whereas in. Whereas in jet Germany, this sort of thing, say that sort of dive bomber. Insistence on dive bombers is an actual impediment to types and development. It isn't quite in Britain's good because you've a free. Basically one's, one's. One of those societies is freer than the other. And so people are going, yeah, yeah, yeah, don't worry, boss, we're on it. And actually de Havilland carry on developing the mosquitoes.

[James Holland]

Well, because it's made it absolutely clear that this is a temporary measure. This is right now.

[Al Murray]

Yeah.

[James Holland]

Doesn't mean, say you're not going to need it in the future. But it's really interesting, you know, he doesn't like committees, he doesn't like fighting FAF at all. So rather than sort of sending a letter, which was a traditional way, forget that. He just gets on the telephone. If he can't be sorted out by the telephone, he sends one of the map people in the Ministry of Aircraft Production down to hand. Sort it out. Yeah, and kick butt. And he expects incredibly long hours. You know, this is not a concession to workers rights by any stretch of imagination. You know, people are working literally 24, 7. He also sacks Lord Nuffield. He might have been very adept at running the Morris Motor Corporation, but is absolutely useless running aircraft production.

[Al Murray]

Yeah.

[James Holland]

So he sends Sir Richard Fairey of Fairey Aircraft Company to the new Spitfire factory at Cotswold Bromwich to see why, after two years of it being in operation, literally nothing is coming out at all. And Fairey finds that mismanagement is rife, that people are slack, that they haven't got the right machine tools. The whole thing's just a complete shower. So Vickers immediately takes over the entire operation at Beaverbrook's insistence, and, you know, things start to improve really quickly. He also speaks to Beaverbrook and to Keith park, who is the. Not to Lee Mallory and incidentally, but he speaks to Keith Barr every single night, really. Brings him up and Dowding and says, what do you need? How's it all going? But the big thing he does is he turns around the systems.

[Al Murray]

Yeah.

[James Holland]

The ways of operating to speed up production as much as possible.

[Al Murray]

So he makes. He makes what's in place work, basically.

[James Holland]

He makes what's in place. So what is in place has been set up by Lord Swinton and by others, you know, and that's why they deserve the credit they. They deserve. But as I say, the man who puts kind of, you know, rocket fuel into this process is Beaverbrook. And in the first week, you know, of him being in charge, there's 130 new types of all aircraft. By the third week of May, that's risen to 200. And by the last week of May, that's 280. Yeah, it's more than double. Weekly production is around 250, 300 new types in June, you know, so that's improving. A week of the 2nd to the 8th of June, for example, 80 Hurricanes and 22 Spitfires are built. But in June alone, 446 new fighters are built. In July, that figure is 496.

[Al Murray]

I think the really interesting thing he does is this is the civilian repair organization.

[James Holland]

Well, he takes it from the Air Ministry. Yeah. So everything gets taken. So stores and supplies and all the rest of it. He goes around changing all the padlocks. So the air Ministry can't do it. He's just moved quicker. Yeah. So he goes, right, I'm taking all of this, knows that the air Ministry is going to go splutter and go, you can't possibly do that.

[Al Murray]

Yeah.

[James Holland]

So he just goes around and just opens all the stores, changes all the padlocks. So when the air Ministry get there, you know, he's already changed that a week ago. He changes the recategorizer, you know, recategorizes everything. So. So there used to be levels 1, 2 and 3. Now there's levels 4, 5 and 6. Level 4 is now aircraft that can be repaired in 36 hours on the spot. Level 5 are aircraft which are safe to fly, likely so fly in repairs. So you could take them from Biggin Hill and take them to some repair depot. And then level six are those that would take more than 36 hours and might need to be moved by road and responsibility for transporting these to depots and civilian repair units. So the civilian repair organization, which is Croatian, go to civilian repair units, which is a CRU. Yeah. Is left to number 50 maintenance unit. So these are the guys with the trucks and all the rest of it, again, indoctrinated with, with, you know, speed, pace of action, long hours, all the rest of it. And the transformation is incredible.

[Al Murray]

And again, the contrast with the Germans here is German damage types have to go back to Germany.

[James Holland]

Yeah, well, because they've got brand new airfields, they've got enough kit.

[Al Murray]

That's another example of the home advantage. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[James Holland]

But, you know, by July 1940, production of new aircraft has risen by 62%, new engines by 32%. But the repaired aircraft has risen by 186%.

[Al Murray]

That's amazing.

[James Holland]

Repaired engines by 159%. So that is just amazing. But you know, you think that Fighter command alone has 331 Spitfires and Hurricanes. After the losses in France on 1 June 1940, by 30 June, it's got 587 Spitfires and Hurricanes by the temperature's got around 640.

[Al Murray]

That's amazing. That is truly incredible. Well, we should talk about, we should talk about the planes. Although I think, I think it's fair to say that, you know, probably that the Hurricane is clad in fabric. We understand that, you know, it's essentially the end of the biplane technology. It's a Hawker Fury without the top wing. But let's still perv on these planes anyway because they're fantastic.

[James Holland]

First flight, 6th of November 1935. The hurricane.

[Al Murray]

Yep.

[James Holland]

Thick wings. Yep.

[Al Murray]

Stable gun platform.

[James Holland]

But the weaknesses are it's slow. Well, and also it's. It's got a very easy stall, very quick stall. You can't see it coming. So. So normally when you're about to store, you have pre stall buffeting. Whether.

[Al Murray]

Well, let's explain, let's basically explain what a stall is because I think we' talking about a store. Like we know that's the point where the plane stops flying.

[James Holland]

Yes. It no longer has enough thrust to keep it airborne.

[Al Murray]

Well, or enough lift.

[James Holland]

Enough lift.

[Al Murray]

Yeah, enough lift and thrust in combination to keep it going and keep it airborne. It literally drops out the sky.

[James Holland]

But the problem with that is that in the Hurricane is you don't get much warning in a Spitfire. You get lots of pre pre stall buffeting where, where it shakes. You don't get much of that. So Hurricane pilots tend to under fly it because they don't want to suddenly be caught out. Yes, yes, it has a great turning circle, but only if you absolutely cane it. But no one's going to cane it because they don't want to.

[Al Murray]

They don't want to distort out.

[James Holland]

When it does stall, it drops a wing and it starts going into spiral. It's very, very hard to get out of it.

[Al Murray]

This instability built into how they work.

[James Holland]

Yes.

[Al Murray]

Into how they fly.

[James Holland]

One of the other problems is that you've got the. One of the good things is you've got four machine guns side by side on one wing, four machine guns in the other and you harmonize them so that they come to a point at a certain distance. The flip side of that is you've got fuel tanks at the foot of the wings. The base of the wings. And if you've already fired your guns and you get hit, the wind as you're flying goes into those gun ports and fans the flames up into the cockpit. Which basically means you've got about three.

[Al Murray]

Or four and you've also got an enormous fuel tank in front of you. Right in front of you.

[James Holland]

The other problem is it's got this sort of cage like canopy, a bit like the one on the meshmit109 basis, sort of, you know, the visibility isn't great. The other big problem that they said there was, it had a sort of habit of leaking oil from one of the seals around the propeller so you could be flying along. Suddenly you have to sprinkle oil on the front of the windscreen, you can't see any. So that wasn't great.

[Al Murray]

But we do love the Hurricane.

[James Holland]

Love the Hurricane.

[Al Murray]

Make no mistake.

[James Holland]

Stable gun courage.

[Al Murray]

It's a very stable gun platform and that's what, that's what's special about it. And then it's more glamorous cousin. I mean, actually the thing that makes these two planes viable is the Merlin engine. Anyway. Yes, it's the, the time and money and spent on developing the Merlin engine. Which means. Although it's got its problems with the carburetor in particular, but the Spitfire is the sort of.

[James Holland]

It's brand new, it's brand smacking new, it looks sexy, it is sexy. You know, all those sort of things. First flies 5th of March, 1946, of course, but in the first part of the Battle of Britain, you know, in June and July, it hasn't got variable pitch propeller which changes automatically. So the angle of the blades on the propeller change as you're, you know, it's a bit like changing gear, effectively. Yeah. You know, you want to be in.

[Al Murray]

Fifth gear and it affects how fast you can climb.

[James Holland]

Yes, that's the big thing.

[Al Murray]

And the rear, that is the, this is all about climbing fast because the Hurricane could climb relatively quickly for an aircraft of its time. But the Spitfire is, is once it's got the proper propeller on, it really can climb quickly.

[James Holland]

Yes. So that's the big thing. But there's no fuel injection either on the, on The Spitfire Mark 1 or the Hurricane. And what that means is when you, if you haven't got fuel injection, that means you can't control the carburetor in the same way. So when you, when you suddenly dive, you create negative gravity and that forces a fuel to the top of the float chamber in the carburetor, which Then becomes flooded very briefly cuts out and it regains itself. But that can lose you a couple of seconds worth of diamonds.

[Al Murray]

It's an extraordinary oversight in the design of the Merlin engine.

[James Holland]

Yeah. They quickly rectify.

[Al Murray]

I know, but, but you know, they rectify it because suddenly it's a problem. But that no one's foreseen. That is kind of amazing.

[James Holland]

But also it has very low wing loading.

[Al Murray]

Yeah.

[James Holland]

Which basically wing loading is the weight of the plane divided by the wing area. So it's 25 pounds per square foot. On the Spitfire I think it's 32 or something. On the meterschmit 109. And that, that is comparatively low. And that's the big elliptical wing. It has a tight turning circle of 696ft. But both of Spitfire Hurricane only have 300 rounds of ammunition and it's rifle calibre ammunition.

[Al Murray]

This is one of the great vast mysteries of the Air Ministry's decision making process is to equip its intercept fighter aircraft. With such poor weaponry. It doesn't add up as a decision at all. In the 1920s they've decided it's a bad idea.

[James Holland]

1926 there was a paper saying I would not recommend this on under any circumstances. It's like cheating of a peachy.

[Al Murray]

And yet, and yet here we are with four 303s. Maybe one of the reasons, certainly the reason the British army retains.303ammunition is they bought so much in the First World War.

[James Holland]

There's an awful lot of it.

[Al Murray]

Right. There's tons of it.

[James Holland]

I would suspect that's got a high factor in it. You know, make do amend. But the net result of this is it means They've then got 14.7 seconds worth of collective firing. It's not each machine gun firing in turn, they're all firing together. Yeah. And it doesn't take long to get, get around through 300 rounds. And famously 74 Squadron in the Battle of Britain fire 7,000 rounds at a Dornier's team and still don't shoot it down. They're too far away in the described distance of which you harmonize your guns is about 450 yards. That changes. 400. And as the battle progresses, it changes.

[Al Murray]

And what we need, we need to explain what that means. So you Harmon, harmonizing your guns is basically you angle them so that they will converge into a cone, into a cone of bullets. So it's. So if you, I mean literally you've got the four guns across the wing pointing them so they converge and what happens is this. This great AR argument about the distance at which they converge. And by the by, by the time the Battle of Britain's properly going and words got round, you get as close as you can. So you converge your guns as close as you can make them.

[James Holland]

Yeah, well, it's on end of July. It's prescribed at 250 yards from 400, 450 before that, you know, But Tom Neal, for example, who was in 249 Squadron, you know, he sets his guns to 150 yards. Yeah, that's. That's kind of sort of more like it. But we should talk about the Luftwaffe. They have also developed their own version of rdf designator Telegraphia dt. Yeah, or DTE Telegraphi.

[Al Murray]

Telegraphy. The thing is, is they figured out the same thing, but the conclusions they've arrived at are quite different. So it is spinning radar like you'd like. Yeah, exactly. Because of that, they can't. They can't recognize rdf.

[James Holland]

Well, they think it's something similar, some kind of version. They do call them DT masts.

[Al Murray]

Yeah.

[James Holland]

So they recognize that it. That it is a radio detection mast. But they're kind of comparatively primitive. Nature of Watson, Watson Watts masts actually lull the Luftwaffe into sort of being a bit complacent about them, which is a good thing. Radar DT is developed by the Kriegsmarine rather than the Luftwaffe, and as we all know, they don't really talk to each other very much. So they have Wurzburg and Freyr on the coasts of Northern France and the Low Countries, but they're not there to help the Luftwaffe in any shape or form.

[Al Murray]

What we talked about a lot talking about the Jadding system is the fact that it's. Everything's joined up, you've got lots of radio. The idea is that everyone knows what's going on. The information could be spread really easily. The Germans not keen on radio telegraphy at all at this stage.

[James Holland]

There's no ground control at all.

[Al Murray]

Yeah.

[James Holland]

So. So you take off, you can communicate in your staffel. You might even be able to communicate in your groupen. Yeah, Your group of three. Staffel. But you certainly can't communicate with the bombers you're supposed to escort. You know, you're told when to form up, where to form up, and off you go. So all those instructions are handed out before the mission takes place. So the mission has to take place according to the instructions or else you're on your own.

[Al Murray]

Yeah. I mean, the thing is, is this then means a squadron, a staffer leader or a gripper leader is trying to conduct the battle.

[James Holland]

Yeah.

[Al Murray]

So if he gets lost, they all get lost.

[James Holland]

Yes. And if he attacks the wrong airfield, they all attack the wrong.

[Al Murray]

They will attack the wrong airfield. If he fails to meet up with the bombers he's meant to be escorting, they all fail to meet up with the bombers.

[James Holland]

But it's not that there aren't people who don't understand the value of radios. There are, and it's really interesting. So there's this amazing memoir by this guy called Ulrich Steinhilber, who's a young Leutnant in JG52, and his immediate boss is Adolf Galland. In 1940. And in 1939, Steinheilberg was made Nachrichtenoffizier, which is a sort of communications officer in what at the time is the first group of Jagdgeschwader 433. Then becomes JG52. And Steinhelper learns that he's supposed to be having 75 men under him equipped and trained to operate radio stations. Stations and mounted on trucks. We've covered sort of mobile radio telegraphy and all the rest of it. But he discovers actually he's only got about 20 men. They just haven't appeared. There's no one there. No one's organized. No one's ever bothered with it. Gallen's not in the slightest bit interested in this. Doesn't encourage him whatsoever. But he thinks, no, you know, this is. This is. I can see this is. This is going to be a benefit. So he tries to encourage the group to use ground control, but makes himself thoroughly unpopular in the process, largely because gallons are kind of my way or the highway type. It doesn't really like it. So eventually he organized this huge, great exercise, using ground observers and mobile radio teams to connect to the pilots and watching. This is General Hugo Sperlo, who's one of the Luftflotter commanders for the Battle of Britain. And in the debrief afterwards, it's hardly mentioned. And eventually Steinheil puts his hands up and says, you know, what did you think of the radio communications? Galland immediately cuts him off and goes, good, Steinhelper, you've reminded me me. You were talking far too much. You were just bothering us all the time. As I've always told you, it'd be best to throw out all of these damn radios. We don't need them. And that's that.

[Al Murray]

Oh, dear. Well, I mean, and good. You know, I'm speaking from a British perspective here. The Crummier. The Luftwaffe's effort is the better.

[James Holland]

Yeah.

[Al Murray]

Right. So we should just, we should just.

[James Holland]

Very, very briefly just explain how they're organized. So, so Luftwaffe is organized into Gischwada and to groups. It's like an RAF group and a group is like an RAF wing.

[Al Murray]

Yeah. And within a group is three Staffel, which is kind of a squadron.

[James Holland]

Yeah. So a Geschwader has three Groupen. Each Groupen has three Staffell. Yeah. And yes, a Staffell is sort of like a squadron and they have air fleets. They don't have commands. So each fleet is like an army, you know, so it has its various component parts as fighters and bombers and Stukas and reconnaissance and so on. So it's a tactical air force.

[Al Murray]

That's the bottom line.

[James Holland]

It's a tactical air force rather than a strategic air force. Yeah. Just to remind people, tactical air force was one which is designed to. To support ground operations. A strategic air force is one which operates independently of any other unit.

[Al Murray]

Although, I mean, it's theoretically one, isn't it? That's the idea, yes. What the Germans have done with the Luftwaffe is they've had the conception of a tactical air force and they've delivered it in practice.

[James Holland]

Yeah.

[Al Murray]

But that means they've not thought about anything else much and certainly not. And certainly not any practice with anything else much. Which is what then is part of the confusion for them for the Battle of Britain.

[James Holland]

Yeah.

[Al Murray]

And then, I mean, the Staffeln Staffel is 12 aircraft and pilots.

[James Holland]

Yes.

[Al Murray]

So rather than the overmanning thing that the RAF has, which means you can rotate pilots, you can rest people, everyone has to go every time with an aircraft.

[James Holland]

Well, yes, and there's a difference between establishment and serviceability on any given. So establishment is 12, but in reality they hardly ever have 12 available. They usually, you know, on a good day you might have nine or 10. Yeah. But you're almost certainly never going to have 12 because you know, someone's got an instrument that's got this and then.

[Al Murray]

And then in terms of producing aircraft, because obviously we emphasized how important that is for the British. The Germans are sort of, it's tailing off and. And it started earlier. Yeah, yeah, well, they started, but part of the issue in Germany isn't it is there was a wariness on the part of the German government to commit to the idea that this is a full bore war that's going to last a really long time. You know, the whole point is we'll get it done now. We're not going to need to produce more aircraft. And also there's real limits on what they can actually produce.

[James Holland]

Yeah. The German way of wars do it really quickly.

[Al Murray]

Yeah, yeah.

[James Holland]

It's not for a long war, so.

[Al Murray]

But.

[James Holland]

But they have lost a third of their operational strength since the 10th of May. Yeah. And it is amazing. I mean, it's just worth reminding. Reminding people of this statistic of 354 aircraft lost on the 10th of May. It's the single worst day for Luftwaffe in the entire war.

[Al Murray]

I mean, we talked about this bit for a Hurricane and we have to say that the ME109 is a better plane than either of them, isn't it, Jim?

[James Holland]

Well, it is at this point. I mean, it just is. There's no getting away from it. As Tom Neal says, it could do the three things required of a fighter aircraft in 1940 better than any other. It could climb faster, dive faster and pack a greater punch in the combat zone. The canopy is awful because it's like a door. So A opens up on hinges and opens up to the side, you know, rather than pushing back and forward. Yeah. Which is difficult to get out of at high speeds.

[Al Murray]

One of the interesting things about it, though, is the reason it exists, or it's the reason it's the. It's the type that the Germans pick is because of news of the Spitfire.

[James Holland]

Yeah. That is really.

[Al Murray]

They've got it. They've got a procurement competition going on. The Germans. Yeah.

[James Holland]

And everyone's expecting it to be the High court one too.

[Al Murray]

Yeah.

[James Holland]

Which has elliptical wings, wind undercarriage.

[Al Murray]

Yeah.

[James Holland]

And has incredible range.

[Al Murray]

Arguably a better plane. But. But they hear word of the Spitfire and they opt for the 109 because.

[James Holland]

It'S fractionally faster than that Heinkel 112 and it can climb faster than the Heineken 112. So it does, you know, by the time it has the Daimler Ben 601, it's got. It's got supercharger, it's got fuel injection, it's got electrical variable pitch propeller, you know, all of which becomes standard on any fighter plane by the end of 1940.

[Al Murray]

The plane they're flying in 1940 is the E is the. It's the fifth variant and they've been flying that little bit.

[James Holland]

Mark one.

[Al Murray]

Yeah, exactly. The Mark one Spitfire. One A's and one B's. That. Come on. What you've actually got here is the fruits of the Spanish Civil War and Poland and their experience with what they need to tune. Fine tune on the fighters. So that's why they're. That's why they're into their fifth type at this point in the war.

[James Holland]

And it has very high wing loading. As I said earlier on, it's got 32 pounds per square foot. So that means that the wings are much smaller. Yeah, that means less drag, so greater speed, you know. But it also means a higher stalling speed. Yeah, but the ME 109 gets around that by having slats at the front of the wings as well as at the back. Yeah. Which you can. Which will come out automatically at a certain speed. Which means in theory it can actually out turn the Spitfire.

[Al Murray]

I think the really important thing is because, you know, these fighters are neck and neck in this regard. Essentially what we're really looking at here though, is the armament, because we've said how the both British fighters, Spitfire Hurricane have been equipped with pea shooters with rifle ammunition. The Messerschmitt has a cannon that fires an exploding.

[James Holland]

Yeah. There's different varieties of the ME109E. Yeah. And some have kind of, you know, one cannon and four machine guns. One.

[Al Murray]

But the cannon is. The cannon is the point, because the round, the round explodes on contact with its target. That's a completely different deal to firing bullets at something.

[James Holland]

Yeah. And also the interesting thing is that the Merlin Bols Ross Merlin is made of magnesium alloy. So if it gets hit by a cannon, that's Good night Charlie to that engine. Whereas the DB601 is made out of steel and if a, if a three or three hits at it squashes it like PMG.

[Al Murray]

Whereas a cannon round. A cannon round would have a greater effect.

[James Holland]

Yeah, but you have also the machine guns have drums of a thousand rounds rather than 300. So they have 55 seconds worth of firing rather than 14.7 seconds of firing. That's a huge, huge difference. Yeah. And obviously you've only got 60, you got very few cannons because it's chunky and big and there's, you know, it's got small wings, so it hasn't got much room. So it has 60 rounds. But. But your machine guns have tracer, which is sort of, you know, fluorescence on every fifth bullet or whatever. So the really skilled marksman, what it can do is he can get his aim with his thousand rounds of machine gun bullets. And then you only press one. Yeah, a cannon and you've hit it.

[Al Murray]

And then there's this, it's chunkier brother, the 110Zora, which is. Which is a twin engine plane. This is a plane with flying across the North Sea and attacking Britain in mind, isn't it as a fighter escort, it's got tremendous range, very long legs, does 300 miles per hour. But the problem is very, very powerful armament. But its problem is because it's a twin engine plate, it's not as maneuverable, it's not as quick, and because it's.

[James Holland]

Big, you can't dive quicker. The great USP of the 109 is going to dive quicker than anything else. So actually turning circles are irrelevant because if you're suddenly being, being attacked by someone, you've got someone on your own, you chuck the stick forward and down you go, you're going to outrun them. So you don't need lardi dar fancy aerobatics, but in a 110 you don't have that luxury.

[Al Murray]

And then, then the bombers that the Germans have, you know, there's the, the Stuka, the Ju 87, which is, which shows it's a tactical air force. That is, that is a tactical battlefield weapon, isn't it? It's for attacking armies, attacking bunkers, that sort of thing, which is used to incredible effect in France and the Netherlands and in Poland as well, with its Lem Grate on the, on the wing. That's a siren. Yeah, that makes a noise to scare bejesus out of you. It's sort of synonymous with blitzkrieg, that plane. Yeah, but, but the battle that's coming, coming isn't blitzkrieg. So for all its strengths and advantages.

[James Holland]

You start to dive at around sort of 8,000ft typically, and you do about 85% gradient, virtually kind of vertical, and at some point you pull out, there's air brakes, you drop your bomb, there's a little bit of Perspex, the bomb aiming, you know, the pilot can see through his target.

[Al Murray]

Yeah. There's a window in the floor so.

[James Holland]

You can see where the bomb's going and all that stuff, you know, it's all quite clever, quite well thought down. Mostly the problem with this is that as you're coming out of your, your dive, you're virtually stationary, you're very slow, it's got a fixed undercarriage, so it's not, not fast, it's not very maneuverable and anyone hovering above you, you know, you're easy meet. It's very, very difficult to be accurate. It's fine length ways, but it's not, you know, I mean, so for example, you know, if you're attacking a 250 yard long ship, and let's face it, most destroyers, for example, are only about 120 yards, you know, a Stuka would have 1.5 second window in which to release a bomb. But if you're doing a cross attack, it's a quarter a of. So you know, it's literally nothing. And it makes it very difficult to attack accurately if your target is moving. Yeah. And B, if you have the enemy above you.

[Al Murray]

And then their medium bombers, although they haven't got a heavy one. So their medium bombers are. Their heavy bombers, as it were, the Heinkel 111 and the Dornier do 17 flying.

[James Holland]

Yeah. And they're both developed in the early 1930s. I mean this is the point, you know, both of them have only got, they can only carry about a ton each.

[Al Murray]

And the Ju 88 is the third type that the Germans have got which is a newer, supposedly a faster bomber that's all but has been diverted in its development with the dive bombing.

[James Holland]

Well, yeah, they keep sort of insisting it has dive bombing potentials, you know, and the good folk at Junkers kind of sort of teeth suck a lot and so. Well, you know, we can do that. But you know it's going to cost you. It's going to cost you in terms of financial costs, it's going to cost you in terms of time and it's going to cost you in terms of performance. Yeah. So what's that? What's a super fast kind of 300 mile an hour twin engine bomber with huge range becomes a bomber that can basically fly the same speed as a Dornier and a Heinkel, but maybe a little bit faster. But it's interesting, you know, I mean, you know, the Luftwaffe's arsenal is therefore a very mixed bag of the flawed, the aging and of course the brilliant.

[Al Murray]

But also it's a mixed bag of aircraft suited to a completely different task. This is in the end, the encounter in the Battle of Britain is a tactical air force tries to take on a fighter defence system. Were the Luftwaffe Strategic Air Force with that fighter system in mind, maybe it would have a better chance. But the fact is it isn't and it doesn't even know that this system exists.

[James Holland]

No, exactly. So it's starting its battle seriously. Disadvantage, disadvantage. It's worth looking at. So on the 3rd of August 1940, this is the arsenal that the Luftwaffe has. And there's authorized strength, which is what it's supposed to have. There's actual strength, then there's combat ready and then there's combat ready with air crew. So authorized strength of single engine fighters is 1,171. Actual strength 1065. Yeah, combat ready 878 combat ready with pilots ready to fight England 760. Yes.

[Al Murray]

Okay.

[James Holland]

Twin engine fighters authorized strength 332 actual, strength 310, combat ready 240 combat ready with crew 230 bombers. Okay, so this is really interesting.

[Al Murray]

Yeah, come on.

[James Holland]

Bombers authorized strength 1638 actual, strength 1458, combat ready 818. That's 50%. Yeah, combat ready with air crew somewhere between 700 and 800. Can't quite show you're 45.

[Al Murray]

And the problem is if you're going to Hitler, you go, we have 1171 fighters on our, on our establishment. And he goes, wonderful, carry on. Then you go back to your headquarters and going, yeah, but we can only get, you know, two thirds of those in the air. You don't tell him that, do you? And this is the, the other, their other problem is because as, as the battle proceeds, there is a question of claiming and over claiming and everyone lying about the numbers of plane shots down. The thing to compare those numbers with is then as, as the battle proceeds between the 3rd of August, the 20th, 28th of September, the Germans lose 719 bombers. And you've just said that they're basically, their combat ready with Pilot strength is 7 to 800 bombers. They lose the lot and you know, they lose 400 crew. Yeah, that's a serious bite out of their capability. And they lose 97 dive bombers to the point where the dive bombers, where the Stukas are stood down. So the point is, as the battle begins, the balance sheet, if you take it at a glance, favours the Luftwaffe. But the circumstances are tactical air force being asked to do a strategic task against a fighter defence system that's untested. Yes, but that the Germans don't even appreciate exists.

[James Holland]

So we've looked at Canal Camp, we've looked at phase one of the Battle of Britain. We've looked at the system, the two sides, what, what they've got assets and, you know, pluses and minuses and all the rest of it. Now we are getting ready for. Adler angrily.

[Al Murray]

Exactly.

[James Holland]

The Attack of the Eagles, Luftschlachtland. Yes, exactly. This is the second phase, people of the Battle of Britain. That's what we're going to be looking at in episode three.

[Al Murray]

So join us in our next episode of. We have ways of making you talk for episode three. Should we call it Luftschlacht?

[James Holland]

Englund? Yes or no? We could just call it more easily Attack of the Eagles.

[Al Murray]

Okay, we'll call it Attack of the Eagles. Then you can choose either subscribe to our Patreon, in which case you'll hear this without adverts and get extra episodes and nuggets along the way. Thanks for listening. I'll see you again.

[James Holland]

Cheerio.

[Al Murray]

Whether it's in Drive, Dropbox, Slack, or that folder called Ugh.

[James Holland]

Dropbox Dash finds it fast. Smart search built for messy humans. Learn [e-mail] dash.