A Summer Bright and Terrible: Winston Churchill, Lord Dowding, Radar, and the Impossible Triumph of the Battle of Britain

How can a summer be bright and terrible? Fisher writes convincingly that the long, dry, summer of 1940 over England offered the world a turning point, the Battle of Britain. The star was Hugh "Stuffy" Dowding, the aging officer responsible for the fighter defense of England. Faced with the assumption that fighters were too slow, too under armed, and too late - "the bomber will always get through" - and faced with an overwhelming enemy, Dowding had to Marshall has scarce "chicks", lull Hermann Goring into believing that England had no resistance left, and postpone Operation Sea Lion. This bright, terrible summer provided the backdrop for this well-documented battle. Fisher offers four parts - winter, spring, summer and fall - to create a complete context for this fascinating historical story.The strategy was to fight strategically, with a few well-positioned squadrons taking on waves of German bombers and fighters. The "secret" to the success was the intricate defense communications system, based on nascent radar, a system that provided enough time for fighters to rise up to meet the Huns. Even at the time, Dowding's plan was not universally accepted. Even his success in turning the tide and postponing the inevitable invasion did not save him his job. Other people clamored for more credit, including Winston Churchill, rankled peers, a disgruntled scientist, and the legless fighter pilot, Douglas Bader. "Bomber" Harris and the "big wing" theory may have earned more press, but Fisher makes his point clearly, if personally and even conversationally, that Dowding saved the day, on stubborn spunk and science. Dowding leveraged his experience in the first Great War to manage a career based on science more than diplomacy or tact. He was loved by the men he led, and reviled by many of the peers he challenged.Fisher even forgives Neville Chamberlain's aligned "appeasement" as a method for England to buy time in the run up to full-scale war. Clearly England was not yet equipped to defend itself at the time of Munich, but it is hard to know if Hitler would have been ready to go. Fisher is a scientist, a professor of cosmochemistry, who teaches about war and science, and he has a skill at putting together the scientific and technological advances that saved England as well as those half-baked ideas that fortunately did not stop radar and Dowding's communication system from stopping the onslaught. Fisher has a light, pleasant, non-technical writing style. The reader feels as if Fisher is telling a story, perhaps to a classroom of students. He details Dowding's life, including Dowding's fascination with spirit life, séances, and mediums. Fisher takes on some of the conventional wisdom as to heroes and chumps and leaves the reader satisfied with a thorough, personal story, even with Fisher's self-admitted bias about some incidents and people.The final flare of the Battle of Britain, the second week in September 1940, when Hitler finally had to acknowledge that the invasion was off, provides a fitting climax to a climactic story. This is interesting history, enjoyable, educational and informative, vivid yet not graphic, personal, candid, and willing to look at both sides of the numerous accounts of this period. Having read many of them myself, I recommend this one as a satisfying experience.

The book is readable and entertaining which is certainly helpful. But, The author seems to find interesting "facts" that leaves the inquisitive reader wondering, How does he know? There are intimate conversations that seem to be added out of nowhere as it suits the author's purpose, evidently. But those passages can be glossed over and the real facts are fascinating and certainly worth the effort of reading this other side of history. I was disappointed with the constant interjections of ridicule by the author whenever a character inserts a reference of God and the possibility of his intervention into the affairs of men. For example he points out that the Jews were particularly mistreated by their Creator without any reference to the rebellion of Israel at certain times in their history. He suggested that any suggestion of intervention in the evacuation of Dunkirk should be debunked because, God should have intervened to save more lives and he should have prevented Britain from getting into that predicament to begin with. This constant interjection of ridicule are unnecessary and frustrating but I suppose it is the author's privilege to believe what he wants. I do recommend the book.

A Summer Bright and Terrible: Winston Churchill, Lord Dowding, Radar, and the Impossible Triumph of the Battle of Britain by David E. Fisher is the story of more of the more eccentric military geniuses, High Dowding, the Commander of RAF Fighter Command during The Battle of Britain. I mention eccentric because Dowding's bend-of-mind makes folks like Patton and Montgomery seem dead normal.In fact, if you combined Patton's belief in reincarnation and the afterlife with Montogomery's stubbornness, you get a pretty good idea of how - under normal circumstances - loopy this man was. Fisher describes a man that openly spoke of discussions with dead fighter pilots and who married a woman whose dead husband recommended to Dowding that he do so. That selfsame woman, by the way, as a child had had dreams about a man named Hugh - vastly older than she - who had protected her from harm.So, was Hugh Dowding a nut case?Ultimately, it simply doesn't matter because this man also was responsible for some of the most innovative developments in aerial combat: multi-gunned monoplane fighters, radar and its associated ground-control infra-structure and the twin-engined radar carrying night fighter. Along the way, he also managed to stand up to Winston Churchill and maintain a cadre of the aforementioned fighters in England when the PM was bound and determined to lose them all in an effort to save France.And in return for these efforts, he was villified in person and behind his back; left in suspense as to his future for months on end, dis-obeyed by several of his immediate subordinates and, ultimately, forced out of service. Years - no decades - Dowding has received his proper due for his accomplishment that thwarted Operation Sea Lion. It is he in the RAF alcove at Westminster - along with Trenchard - and not Leigh-Mallory.The story is one of the most true examples of doing the right thing, despite and in spite of the potential repercussions. An absolutely excellent work. I only wish that Fisher had footnoted the book. By not not doing so, he hoists himself on his own petard of chastising those who mis-quote or fabricate.

The author is not a professional historian and it shows. Although he includes a short bibliography there is none of the critical apparatus i.e. footnotes that enable a reader to check in more detail the origins and veracity of the information we are fed in this enjoyably quirky book.The writer has a background in science and as a non-scientist I am grateful for his clear explanations of the workings of radar and the insight that the CH system had its teething troubles which is often glossed over in more conventional histories.Fisher's chatty writing style helps you to read this book quickly and its prose is enjoyable but although Dowding's religious beliefs may have some relevance to the story he is telling, how useful is it describe him at one point in his narrative as "round the bend"? This is more the language of the playground than a serious look at the man and his achievements from a psychological point of view.Trafford Leigh-Mallory is again seen as one of the villains of the piece which may have some merit but the argument needs to be built up and proven. The actions of those responsible for the removal of Dowding should be looked at in the context of 1940 rather than with hindsight which is rarely generous to those in power when a fuller historical picture comes to be revealed.The repeated statement that Sir Arthur Harris is head of Bomber Command whilst Dowding was in charge of Fighter Command is clearly wrong and has been alluded to in another review. Therefore some doubt must cast on the accuracy of this work as a whole. It would be better read in conjunction with other books by John Ray, Vincent Orange and even Jack Dixon for example, to obtain a more detailed and documentary based analysis of Dowding and the events of the summer and autumn of 1940.

Wow, what a great peak behind the curtain regarding the Battle of Britain in WW II.I thought I had read most accounts of this but this book provides another layer ofsound and very interesting information.

excellent battle of Britain read