Big Wing

Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, commanding officer of RAF Fighter Command, had put a huge amount of effort into developing the world's first integrated air defence system, the Dowding system, incorporating the Chain Home radar stations, Royal Observer Corps ground observation posts, telecommunications and information processing.

[4] Using the tactics devised by Sir Hugh Dowding, Park met the raids with individual squadrons, which he considered to be the most flexible and effective use of his aircraft, particularly in light of the shallow depth of penetration of British airspace by the Luftwaffe.

Supported by Duxford station commander Group Captain "Woody" Woodhall, Bader's wing theory was developed over the next few days and initially involved three squadrons; No.

Bader acknowledged the fact that they were too slow forming up and for the flight to the patrol area the formation was too disjointed; the Big Wing claimed 11 enemy aircraft destroyed for the loss of one fighter.

Park had experimented with large wings (covering the Dunkirk evacuation in May 1940) and insisted that they were unwieldy, difficult to manoeuvre into position and rarely in the right place when needed.

Bader further delayed deployment of 12 Group fighters by insisting he lead the Big Wing; to do this he had to fly 242 Squadron to Duxford from RAF Coltishall every day.

Bader wanted time to fly to Duxford, land, take-off again, then form a Big Wing; the amount of early warning required for this was wildly unrealistic.

In similar circumstances I called on No 12 Gp to cover my fighter aerodromes northeast and east of London but Leigh-Mallory failed to respond.

What has been described [citation needed] as an "even-handed" assessment of the affair was published in the Air Ministry's Air Historical Branch history, written shortly after the battle and published in 1941, [T]he pity is that a controversy was ever allowed to develop; for far from the two Group commanders representing two contrasting methods of solving one and the same tactical problem they really represented tactics complementary to each other, each of which had a valuable part to play in the common struggle, the more so as together the most economical use of the dangerously limited forces available would have been assured.

[citation needed]This is the Air Ministry view, of which the most senior individuals were involved in using the Big Wing theory as the means to conspire against Dowding.

As first published by the Air Ministry there was no mention of Dowding or Park; it was withdrawn and a revised version issued in 1943 at Winston Churchill's insistence.

Some senior officers like Leigh-Mallory and Sholto Douglas wanted to believe these claims so that they could use the Big Wing as a political tool against Dowding.

The "Big Wing" invariably joined combat with the enemy over Northern London, where the German fighter escort was at the very limit of its range and effectiveness.

For a senior commander to take the word of an inexperienced junior officer and commit to such a poorly planned experiment at a critical time is questionable.

The interceptions by the Big Wing only occurred over a short period of time in September, when the Luftwaffe switched from military targets and airfields to daylight raids on London.

The Luftwaffe bombers were at their most vulnerable when they were at the limit of the range of the escorting Messerschmitt Bf 109s and many German fighters had already expended their fuel in combat with 11 Group aircraft over Kent.

While not effective as a fighting tactic, the Big Wing, along with some blatant manipulation of statistics, worked as a political tool for those against Dowding.

It is understandable that Dowding did not fight back given the stress he had been under for the best part of a year, first to conserve Fighter Command, then to oversee the long battle of attrition against the Luftwaffe.

The intention was to prove the superiority of large formations using the circumstances of a real attack on the Kenley, Biggin Hill and Hornchurch sectors on 6 September 1940.

Leigh-Mallory mismanaged the operation, permitting the raid to progress unhindered, resulting in Kenley and Biggin Hill airbases being "bombed" while their aircraft were still on the ground.