Hugh Dowding
Built the system, won the battle, lost the personnel fight. A late-honoured British type.
Command
3
System
3
After
3
The Spitfire and Churchill are the lazy pair. Dowding, Park, and a Polish squadron board are the better trio.
St Paul's in smoke is a Blitz icon often pasted onto the daylight battle.
People
Keith Park
The New Zealander who ran the southeast fight; also sidelined, later a hero in print.
Group
3
Tactics
3
After
3
Hermann Goring
Promised a sky he did not deliver; the political air marshal of the failure.
Promise
3
Turn
3
Later
3
Winston Churchill
Wrote the Few and held the political war. The speeches are sources and myths together.
Speech
3
Role
3
Later
3
Adolf Galland
Later a frank German witness to the campaign's mis-aims -- use as a source, not as a hero template.
Role
3
After
3
Value
3
Douglas Bader
The legless ace of English legend and of the Leigh-Mallory camp -- a memory problem as well as a pilot.
Camp
3
Fame
3
Debate
3
Witold Urbanowicz
A named face for the Polish contribution English pageants long footnoted.
Squadron
3
Role
3
Point
3
Robert Watson-Watt
The Chain Home engineer-administrator -- an unfashionable icon beside the Spitfire.
Tool
3
System
3
Fame
3
Debate
Did the turn to London save Fighter Command?
A durable yes-with-caveats; airfield pressure was real and so were German aim shifts.
Park vs Big Wing
Still a British intramural; most recent work is kinder to Park's 11 Group practice.
1969's film is now a historical source for 1960s memory of 1940.
German memory of the campaign is thinner in English translation -- seek it anyway.