The four geniuses of the Battle of Britain : Watson-Watt, Henry Royce, Sydney Camm, and R.J. Mitchell

185 Pages·2012·3.4 MB·English

by  Camm

First published in Great Britain in 2012 by
PEN & SWORD AVIATION
An imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
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Copyright © David Coles and Peter Sherrard, 2012
9781783033843

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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Preface
Chapter 1 - Robert Watson-Watt – Radar’s Inventor
Chapter 2 - Frederick Henry Royce and the Merlin
Chapter 3 - Sydney Camm – The Designer of the Hurricane
Chapter 4 - Reginald Joseph Mitchell and the Spitfire
Chapter 5 - The German Terror Weapons
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgements
I wish to acknowledge the help I have been given by the RAF Museum, Hendon,
the RAF Museum of Radar and Wikipedia. I would also like to extend my
thanks to Brian Bowbrick, formerly of Vickers, for his superb guidance on
critical points, and to David McKillop for his wonderful work on the photos.

David Eric Alfred Coles
Foreword
Picture the scene: a lovely warm summer’s day in 1940s Hampshire. Between
the railway line and the lazy curving road, the wheat in the large field is almost
ripe and ready to harvest but it has been spoilt by tank tracks. The tank crews are
resting, and the local women have come out to offer tea to these men in their
machines, which are emblazoned with the empty German crosses. Thankfully
these girls are not fraternizing with the enemy, and it is not what an observant
small boy makes of the bizarre scene. This is an exercise and the tanks are
testing the British forces to make sure they are ready for the real thing, the
German invasion. The Nazis gave the planned incursion the codename Seelöwe
(Sea Lion). It was the first planned since Napoleon’s time, but never happened.
But why was that? The reason was that a small band of men and women stood
in the Germans’ way. But even before those few British had been called to arms,
four geniuses had prepared the means for these young heroes to keep the
German forces out of our country, but they only had very little time to spare!
In truth, they set an example for patriotic men and women to follow, as they
readied themselves to do the best for their country, and left the tired tortoises to
criticize and carp from the shelter of their homes. May there always be many
such fine folk, even in our day, to lead our country! The work of these fine men
carried us through the whole war, and to victory over every vicious man and
machine the Nazis could throw at us. But who were these four geniuses, the
giants of those days?
There are unexplained mysteries in our recent history that need exploring.
Instead of moaning about wrongs and omissions, let’s be surprised and truly
delighted about the brilliant things that were done, when it was so easy for lazy
folk or untutored financiers to strangle them at birth? Surely this ought to have a
bearing on what we as a nation can do nowadays! So, let’s look at our history
again.
If the Merlin, Spitfire, Hurricane and radar had reached no further than ‘back
of envelope’ ideas, the days of our young folk would have been overloaded with
a barely opposed German invasion and subsequent compulsory involvement in
an awful fascist youth movement, led by German overlords. What place or
an awful fascist youth movement, led by German overlords. What place or
prospect would there have been then for a Jew or anyone else with an
independent mind?
Why should our fine predecessors, Royce, Mitchell, Camm and Watson-Watt,
have developed the Merlin, the Spitfire, the Hurricane and radar as private
ventures, when their organizations were already successful with the Kestrel
engine, flying boats, the Fury biplane, and esoteric Radio Frequency (RF)
schemes? When Royce made such superb quality cars, why should he have spent
money on a radically new aero engine? And why should Mitchell push a new
monoplane? Supermarine was already busy with top-rate flying boats. Why did
Camm leave the biplane remit? Wasn’t our front-line fighter, the Hawker Fury,
fast enough for the RAF? One answer is that in every decade our present aircraft
are always good enough to the casual observer – so why waste money on further
developments? As for radar, Watson-Watt might just as well have gone to an
academic establishment in the USA. You just could not understand his technical
stuff, let alone put public money into it!
These men and their small groups of assistants must have pushed very hard to
get anywhere in the culture of recession, ignorance and pacifism. You can
understand the prevailing attitude, exemplified in a much later cartoon where a
prehistoric man says to a wheel salesman, ‘I can’t eat it, I can’t wear it, and it
costs too much!’ But much more serious than that, C.E.M. Joad proposed the
resolution in an infamous Oxford Union Society debate ‘Under no circumstance
will this House fight for King and Country’, and it was passed. It was as good as
any public invitation to Hitler, and it told him that our British nation was totally
degenerate. Not much better in the technical field was the opinion of one RAF
officer of air rank who observed that retractable landing gear was impracticable.
And that was just before the coming of the DC-2, which became the DC-3, the
world famous Dakota!
Just think about the results of a successful German invasion of Britain! We
would have had no choice but to be a subservient part of Hitler’s empire. The
Nazis wouldn’t have stopped at terror and repression, but would have stripped
everything from Britain (food, materials and machine tools, the lot), just as they
did in every other part of occupied Europe. They would have split our workforce
into two groups, collaborators and slave labour. There would have been no
liberty or freedom of expression. If our country had only men of small minds
running the show in the 1930s, then we would have fallen with Poland and
France to the Nazis.
We must credit Neville Chamberlain, Churchill’s predecessor, for playing for