Hubert Raymond Allen, DFC (19 March 1919 – 31 May 1987) was a British Royal Air Force (RAF) officer and commentator on defence matters.
In contrast to the conventional narrative account, he maintained that during the Battle of Britain naval rather than air power was the crucial factor.
Allen was commissioned into the Royal Air Force in 1939, the outbreak of war curtailing life as an undergraduate at Cardiff University where he was reading Economics.
He was shot down and wounded on a number of occasions, once by the well-known Luftwaffe ace Werner Molders and again as a result of an air-to-air collision with another RAF pilot.
Allen was a skilled pilot having moved from piston engine propeller-driven fighters to the newer generation of jets including the English Electric Lightning, which had a speed exceeding 1,000 mph.
I knew from my study of military strategy that the demise of the Fleet Air Arm would render ineffective the Navy's role in preserving the sea communications on which Britain utterly depends.
"[5] Allen's The Legacy of Lord Trenchard questioned the need for an independent RAF and the rectitude of Air Staff policies before and during the Second World War.
The provocatively titled Who Won the Battle of Britain (first published in 1974) followed shortly afterwards with a critique of RAF structure, leadership and doctrine before and during the air campaigns of 1940.
[6] Allen argued that the Luftwaffe did not lose the Battle of Britain air campaigns – reasoning that the Luftwaffe's damaging attacks on airfields containing vital sector stations gave them air superiority during the critical period of late August to early September preceding the change of focus to the bombing of London after which it dropped thousands of tons of bombs with negligible losses.
But the Luftwaffe did not win it either as it lacked the training and equipment and therefore the potential to sink enough of the Royal Navy's warships, especially the large capital ships.
Anthony Cumming judged that the immense superiority of the Royal Navy in home waters together with the anti-maritime limitations of the Luftwaffe were the main reasons for the Third Reich effectively abandoning Operation Sea Lion in 1940.
[12][13] In 1958, Duncan Grinnell-Milne submitted his case on behalf of the Royal Navy and in 1960 was further supported by Captain Stephen Roskill, the British Official Naval Historian for the Second World War.
What Battle of Britain accounts have lacked, they argued, is a more holistic approach that sees the campaign as one in which all three services had played a crucial role.
Mason implied that Allen's criticism of the recently deceased Fighter Command chief, Air Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, who could no longer defend himself, was distasteful.
He was widely regarded as a national hero, and was officially acknowledged by the erection of his statue at the RAF Chapel, St Clement Dane a few years later.