AVM Sir Keith Park

- the Battle of Britain

Brian Lockstone MRAeS MILT ©

The last two issues of Aviation News reported on the campaign to commemorate Air Vice-Marshal Sir Keith Park with a statue in London. Much progress has been made and after the personal intervention of the Minister of Defence, Hon Phil Goff, with the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson. A statue is on the way with its location to be decided by the city.

But 68 years after the battle was fought in English skies during that long, hot summer, is the cause worthy? There are no easy answers. The battle was fought long ago. Old divisions have healed. Today’s RAF is a pale shadow of its former self. Such is the shortage of fast jet pilots that former Luftwaffe officers now serve as RAF pilots. Commemoration by statue is no longer fashionable.

Park played a crucial role in the battle and was well-rewarded in terms of decorations, honours and awards. As an air chief-marshal and Air Officer Commanding No 11 Group of RAF Fighter Command, covering south-east England, including London, he bore the brunt of the Luftwaffe’s assault.

It wasn’t all his own work. His left flank, the Midlands, was covered by 12 Group led by the formidable, ambitious ACM Sir Trafford Leigh Mallory. On his right he had 10 Group under ACM Sir Quintin Brand. Scotland was defended by 13 Group under ACM Sir Richard Saull. He got on famously with two of the three.

Atop this structure was Fighter Command, created in 1936 as part of the RAF’s major reorganisation in preparation for a European war. It was commanded by ACM Sir Hugh (‘Stuffy’) Dowding. Park served him as a staff officer before taking over 11 Group. In overall command, as Chief of the Air Staff, was ACM (later Marshal of the RAF) Sir Cyril Newall.

If there are any ‘winners’ of the battle, other than the fighter squadrons, their admirable ground staff and the efficient manufacturing and repair organisations, it would be Dowding and Newall. The former created the first integrated command and control system using the new and highly secret ‘weapon’ of radio location, better known by its US acronym radar, and phased into service the new, very fast monoplane Hurricanes and Spitfires.

Newall’s genius is rarely recognised outside RAF circles. Appointed in 1935, he oversaw expansion of the RAF, creating Fighter, Bomber, Coastal and Training Commands. Mastering the Byzantine British politics of the day, he fiercely resisted Winston Churchill’s demands for a wholesale deployment of Fighter Command squadrons to defend a crumbling France in May 1940.

In this he — and Dowding — were correct. Both regarded France as a lost cause. As it was, the RAF lost more than 1,000 aircraft (including 450 fighters) and 1,100 personnel (mainly aircrew) killed during the Battle for France. Both foresaw the coming battle in British skies.

Newall retired shortly after the battle, after an extended tour of duty. He was posted to New Zealand as governor-general where some rather foolish and ill-judged comments in radio broadcasts dented his public image — but his wartime contributions remain outstanding.

Few campaigns of the 20th century have been as exhaustively analysed and memorialised in print and film as the Battle of Britain. According to British historians, it was waged from 10 July until 31 October 1940. Their German counterparts consider it lasted much longer, from mid-August to May 1941 when the bulk of the Luftwaffe was switched to attack the Soviet Union. Historians still argue over whether Germany intended to invade Britain. The prospect was real. However, in 1940, and without mastery of the skies, an invasion would have been chancy at best.

Statistics are notoriously rubbery, but a reasonable assessment is that the RAF had between 600 and 700 fighters confronting around 1,000 Luftwaffe fighters and 1,200 bombers organised into three Luftflotten or air fleets.

The battle had four distinct phases: the Channel; the attempt to destroy the RAF in the air; attacks on RAF airfields; and bombing raids on major cities. The latter caused heavy casualties. Between July and December 1940, more than 23,000 civilians were killed and 32,000 injured. In one attack, on the night of 19 December, more than 3,000 people were killed. By comparison, the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in the US caused 2,974 deaths and 24 missing.

During the battle, extraordinary tensions developed between Park and Leigh Mallory over tactics – notably the use of ‘big wings’ favoured by the latter. Park argued that he did not have time to assemble such formations, given the brief time from radar identification to the arrival of the Luftwaffe overhead. But the nature of the fighting was such that large formations were unwieldy.

Leigh Mallory was undoubtedly frustrated by Park and it is to Dowding’s discredit that he did not resolve this tactical conflict early on. Leigh Mallory used all his political connections to intervene with the Air Staff and at Cabinet level to force a change in tactics. This seems strange today but understandable in the white heat of a desperate struggle. He was aided and abetted by Douglas Bader, then a junior squadron leader commanding 242 Squadron, on Hurricanes, at Duxford in 12 Group. Bader’s adjutant happened to be also a sitting Conservative MP and long-time Churchill supporter. Combining Leigh Mallory’s and Bader’s ruthlessness and ambition (postwar research shows him in a distinctly unflattering light), it was inevitable that Dowding, and by linkage Park, would suffer.

A difficult and crusty figure, Dowding had his critics in the Air Staff and in the Cabinet. So they acted by rightly criticising him for failing to resolve command questions. Shortly after the battle he was stood down, retiring unhappily in 1942.

Park marched on to greater achievements. So why wasn’t his record better memorialised? Some suggest there was a colonial element. This is nonsense in that while born a New Zealander, his service was solidly British. He was a serving RAF officer with distinguished First World War service in the army and later a noted RFC pilot commanding 48 Squadron, with five confirmed ‘kills’ and 14 shared. His neighbour, ACM Brand, was a South African. One in eight pilots in the battle was a New Zealander.

More compelling is the fact that despite a distinguished record, he was nevertheless a field commander. Was he treated fairly? Many feel he was stood down abruptly after the battle as a consequence of Leigh Mallory’s machinations. Both he and Dowding had had postings considerably longer than the norm. Leadership requires constant revitalisation and renewal.

Others, notably Sir Maurice Dean, the top-ranking civil servant in the Air Ministry during the war, recorded that he was understandably exhausted and needed resting. He knew both men well and had no axe to grind. Park was given an RAF training group before being despatched to Malta, where his brilliant record as an air officer (commanding during the combined German and Italian assault on the island), possibly surpassed the Battle of Britain.

For this, he was rewarded by appointment as AOC Middle East. In 1945 he became air commander South East Asia ahead of an expected invasion of Malaya en route to Japan, in place of his old nemesis Leigh Mallory who had been killed when his RAF transport aircraft crashed en route.

Curiously, postwar British governments appeared reluctant to acknowledge the role of the RAF in other than generalised terms. Some ascribe this to political equivocation over the bombing of German cities with substantial (around 500,000 deaths) casualties.

Its wartime leaders (other than ACM Sir Arthur Harris, AOC Bomber Command) were elevated to the peerage. But only in the 1990s was a statute of Dowding erected in London, outside St Clement Danes, the RAF’s central church on the Strand in the City of Westminster. A commemorative sculpture was opened on the Victoria embankment, on the 65th anniversary. Pilots killed in the battle are remembered in Kent, on the White Cliffs at Capel-le-Ferne, near Folkestone.

So does Park deserve to be remembered in stone? Probably, but not in Trafalgar Square. After all, Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount, was a national figure and had won five major sea battles.

St Clement Danes would be the better place. A bust, perhaps, if not a statute, close to his old boss Dowding. The Sir Christopher Wren-designed church, built in 1682, is a moving tribute to RAF and commonwealth squadrons. Their badges are carved in stone on its floor.

It was there, after his death in 1975, that Park was splendidly farewelled by his old pilots in a remarkable service of remembrance where, by common consent, it was left to Sir Douglas Bader to deliver a generous and gracious eulogy.

This article and images have been reproduced with kind permission of Aviation News Editor John King.

Image Gallery  - Issue 96