More on Korda's book

My Sunday column was inspired by reading "With Wings Like Eagles" by Michael Korda. Here's a few more observations about the book, which I highly recommend.
1. Korda gives credit to Neville Chamberlain and Stanley Baldwin, Churchill's much maligned predecessors, for their underappreciated but invaluable support for the pre-war air defense buildup. Korda gives some credit for this to a powerful piece of fiction, HG Wells's "The Shape of Things to Come," which his father and uncle had adapted into a very successful, powerful film only a few years earlier. The radar warning network they helped fund, though it still had any technical kinks, was vital to air defense.
2. Korda delivers sound assessments of the various aircraft used by both nations. He details their strengths and weaknesses and shows how those attributes shaped the battle. Popular history has dubbed the Spitfire THE British combat plane, but Korda points out that more British pilots actually flew the sturdier Hawker Hurricane. He writes about the development of these aircraft.
3. Korda examines fighter boss Dowding's reluctance to take on the Germans out over the Channel and his tactic of attacking in small fighter groups, avoiding a massed frre-for-all type battle. WhY.
First, the British ability to retrieve pilots lost at seas was far inferior to the Germans, who gave their pilots inflatable rafts and clorful clothing designed to help them if they went inthe drink. The Brits came up short in both regards and Dowding wanted to minimize the loss of trained, experienced airman. The nation could build planes quickly. It could not build good pilots as fast. As for avoiding "Big Wing" style attacks, again Dowding was concerned with stretching his resources out for as long as possible while steadily punishing the Luftwaffe. While the Germans sought the knockout punch, Dowding was content to jab and move and to live to fight again.
4. Dowding also insisted his pilots avoid one-on-one dogfighting and concentrate on knocking out German bombers. This was unpopular with many pilots but Dowding wanted to kill German airman and rob the Luftwaffe of its experienced crews and costlier airplanes.
In the end, his strategy paid off as Hitler and Goering quickly lost patience due to the heavy casualties being inflicted.
5. Korda delves deeply into the internal politics of the British government and the military. Dowding is the star of the story, a fact grudgingly acknowledged by even Churchill, but he is also a doomed figure thanks to his enormous talent for making enemies in high places. It's a fascinating personal story meshed beautifully into Korda's first-rate work.