“An Extraordinary Advantage”
Just prior to his death in 1930, an Italian airman, General Giulio Douhet, had published The War of 19– . Douhet argued that armies and navies should be relegated to defensive roles while bomber fleets won the war. “Any nation investing heavily in air defense was risking defeat,” he wrote, for “No one can command his own sky if he cannot command his adversary’s sky.”1 Douhet’s major convert was Hermann Göring, the head of the Luftwaffe, the German air force.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, who later commanded the Royal Air Force (RAF) in the Battle of Britain, thought Douhet’s thesis fatally flawed. Dowding and eminent British scientists (colleagues of Prof F. A. Lindemann, Winston Churchill’s prime scientific adviser—see story p. 14) convinced Churchill that every offensive weapon could be countered by imaginative, intrepid defenders.
Dowding and the scientists later briefed Churchill on RDF, an acronym so highly secret that until the war only a few men would know of it. RDF was the British abbreviation for Range and Direction Finding, or as the Americans were to christen it, radar.
The British pioneer of RDF and radar technology was Robert Watson-Watt, a scientific civil servant. Churchill would recognize that Watson-Watt had the foresight to apply the concept of radar to a military system. Watson-Watt’s scientific contribution of RDF was a major factor in winning the Battle of Britain and ultimate victory.
The Scientific Scot
Born in Brechin, Angus, Scotland, on 13
