I would remind the Air Council that the last estimate which they made as to the force necessary to defend this country was fifty-two squadrons, and my strength has now been reduced to the equivalent of thirty-six squadrons.

I must therefore request that as a matter of paramount urgency the Air Ministry will consider and decide what level of strength is to be left to the Fighter Command for the defence of this country, and will assure me that when the level has been reached, not one fighter will be sent across the Channel however urgent and insistent the appeals for help may be.

I believe that if an adequate fighter force is kept in this country, if the Fleet remains in being, and if Home Forces are suitably organized to resist invasion, we should be able to carry on the war single-handed for some time, if not indefinitely. But, if the Home Defence Force is drained away in desperate attempts to remedy the situation in France, defeat in France will involve the final, complete and irremediable defeat of this country.

I had a visit from Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding (now Lord Dowding), who had been relieved of Fighter Command after the Battle of Britain was over. As the Commander-in-Chief of Fighter Command he had, of course, saved us and thereby, I believe, the civilized world. But as I have indicated elsewhere in this book, Britain behaved as it always seems to in such circumstances - it promptly turned round and started criticizing the man who had been responsible for our salvation. Petty jealousies amongst senior Air Force officers are unhappily all too frequent, and on this occasion I believe that such jealousies were responsible for one of the most deplorable examples of lack of appreciation for a great Englishman which we have ever displayed. Old "Stuffy" Dowding had not only been the C-in-C. in the whole of the Battle of Britain proper, but he had also been responsible for the introduction of the 8-gun fighter and many of the developments which made that victory possible. There were very good reasons for his leaving Fighter Command, but outwardly the method of his going was unfortunate, to say the least.

The treatment of the Commander-in-Chief Fighter Command, Dowding, after he had won the most critical battle for this country since Drake, was so atrocious that it hardly bears description. He may well have made mistakes. His two principal Group Commanders, Keith Park and Leigh-Mallory, disagreed about tactics; and it has been argued that he should have knocked their heads together, and forced them to conform to his own views, or go. Instead he let them both fight in the way they wished. But all criticism fades before the victory achieved under his supreme command. The story that immediately after the battle he was sacked over the telephone by the Secretary of State, Sir Archibald Sinclair, is untrue. That would have been entirely out of character. On the contrary, Sinclair sent for Dowding to offer him his personal congratulations. This, however, did not prevent Dowding's headquarters staff from being ordered to vacate their offices within forty-eight hours, or the immediate dismissal of Dowding himself.

After that an enquiry was set up by the Air Ministry, to which Dowding and Keith Park were summoned. There they found themselves confronted by an array of Air Marshals, which included Leigh-Mallory. It was more like a court-martial than an enquiry. Dowding as was his custom, said nothing. He just disappeared. No one now maintains that he should not have been relieved of his command after the appalling strain to which he had been subjected, or that Sholto Douglas was not his obvious successor. What is almost inconceivable is that he was never made a Marshal of the Royal Air Force. Some years later he was given a peerage; but by then he had been forgotten.