Buying time

MAx HAsTInGs (Mail) rightly observes that the postponement of hostilities before the outbreak of war, gave time for Fighter Command to make huge strides towards the successful defence of the realm.

of similar importance, as Bernard Lovell observed during his wartime work in radar, was the completion of the Chain Home Command radar stations between portsmouth and the Firth of Forth shortly before the outbreak of war.

It provided advance warning of enemy aircraft for the rAF. The consequence was that, instead of being forced to maintain constant airborne patrols, our fighters and crews could remain on the ground ready to scramble when an attack was imminent.

As Lovell, observed, delaying takeoff until the last minute tripled the effectiveness of our fighter force.

Without the advantage of radar, the Battle of Britain would have had a very different outcome.

John BromLEy-DavEnport (author of Space has no Frontier: the Life and times of Sir Bernard Lovell),

malpas, Cheshire. MAx HAsTInGs makes interesting ‘what if ’ points about Churchill having become pM in 1937.

The same could be applied to Adolf Hitler. If he had suffered a fatal heart attack the day after his triumphal return to Berlin on July 6, 1940, following Germany’s defeat of its principal bete noir, France, it is more than likely there would never have been a nazi policy of the Endlosung

der Judenfrage (the Final solution). Consequently, Hitler’s reputation would have seen him having been elevated to one of the great Chancellors of German history because of what he had achieved in his foreign policy between 1933 and 1940.

Dr John p. Fox, London.