Fighter Command and Control: Greatest Secret of Allied Air Power

It was the spring of 1936, and dark storm clouds of war had gathered over Europe. But few noticed. The American public was isolationist, and the British, still recovering from World War I, were slow to recognize the Nazi menace. Winston Churchill would not become Prime Minister until 1940. One of the few leaders who did understand the threat at this time was RAF Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding, who implemented a revolutionary air defense system that played a critical role in Allied victory and gave my father a terrific job in the Army Air Corps.

On June 13, 1936, Dowding became head of fledgling Fighter Command and immediately began preparing for the Battle of Britain. That battle would not occur until four years later.

Fighter Command was the world's first effective air defense system. Fighter Control was a subsystem of Fighter Command. It consisted of trucks with radio and radar equipment allowing ground-to-air communication between controllers and pilots.

Radar was a key component of Fighter Command. It transformed the war more than any other invention.

In 1936, the RAF had three commands: Bomber Command, Coastal Command, and Fighter Command. Every Command wanted radar, but Dowding lobbied hardest for it and won.

Under Dowding's diligent supervision, Fighter Command was mostly complete by early 1939. That summer, improved recruiting increased British pilot reserves, but there was still a severe shortage. In September 1939, Dowding estimated that he needed 53 fighter squadrons to defend England. He only had 34.

The Battle of Britain began on July 10, 1940. It was the only World War II campaign fought entirely in the air.

At this time, the RAF had only 704 aircraft, including 620 Spitfire and Hurricane fighters. The Germans had 1,290 fighters and 1,392 bombers.

Radar enabled the RAF to locate the Luftwaffe by bouncing short radio waves off incoming enemy aircraft and listening to the resulting echoes. Thus radio and radar operators had preternatural ability to "see" the Germans.

Fighter Command and Control saved fuel, aircraft, and lives. It eliminated the need for roving air patrols, which would have been extremely difficult to impossible. Fighter Command and Control allowed the RAF to get planes up into the air, harass, destroy, and drive off the Germans while they were miles from populated areas, primarily London.

Early warning radar stations consisted of 350-foot towers of dipole arrays and antennas. Chain Home (CH) stations were able to detect incoming aircraft at 5,000 to 20,000 feet and 120 miles out. Chain Home Low (CHL) stations could detect planes under 5,000 feet at 50 miles.

CD/CHL stations came online on December 1, 1939. They detected both low- and high-flying aircraft.

The stations operated 24/7, from Chamberlain's 1938 pact with Hitler until V-E Day in May 1945, except for staggered maintenance. By the end of the war, the RAF had twenty radar stations in the UK and three abroad.

Despite its great prowess, this modern marvel did not completely replace human eyes and ears. Fighter Command, therefore, supplemented its radar and radio defense system with an Observer Corps. During the Battle of Britain, 30,000 observers stationed on 1,000 posts reported to 32 centers in the UK.

Radar was good at measuring speed and distance, but poor at determining altitude. By contrast, observers were able to establish altitude with simple, efficient devices.

Another problem with the radar stations was that they could only "look" in one direction. In addition, the number of attackers indicated by radar was usually off by at least twofold. Observers, however, were able to visually track enemy formations passing over the towers. If it was cloudy, they could gauge enemy height and bearing by listening to the planes.

All stations were linked by land lines feeding into Dowding's headquarters, the "Filter Room." Top-secretly located at the former monastery of Bentley Priory in a north London suburb, the Filter Room received all radar plots from technicians at CH and CHL stations.

Echoes received by radar towers were amplified and displayed on screens of cathode ray tubes employing television principles. Radar operators would interpret and transmit this data to the Filter Room.

In the Operations Room at Fighter Command Headquarters, busy WAAFs resembled roulette croupiers, using long magnetic rakes to move small indicator markers on a large table map. Senior officers were thereby able to get a detailed look at the strength, position, and course of incoming Luftwaffe in real time.

Using special telephones, the WAAFs passed information from the Filter Room to the operations rooms of Group Headquarters. There, group controllers would try to anticipate how and where the enemy would strike. They relayed their conclusions to sector controllers at RAF bases. The sector controllers would then give pilots instructions on where to intercept the Luftwaffe.

Fighter pilots received information from the radar stations within minutes. The

Germans were astonished at how fast RAF flyers appeared.

Scenes of pilots rushing to their airplanes at the sound of an alarm made for exciting films, but they were a far cry from reality. Pilots would actually be strapped into their cockpits and ready for takeoff for several minutes before going on a mission.

Despite the RAF's technological advantage, the Battle of Britain took a huge toll on the UK. She lost one-quarter of her flyers. Due to the dearth of aviators, pilots with 10 hours of flight time were let loose on Spitfires and Hurricanes. Many didn't return from their first sorties.

Overtired airmen flew four or five missions a day. When ordered to rest, they often sneaked back to their squadrons because they didn't want their buddies flying without them.

On September 7, 1940, the Germans switched from daylight attacks on airfields to night bombings of London, exacting a terrible price upon the citizens of that city but easing the strain on Fighter Command. Unable to break the RAF, Hitler called off a planned naval invasion of England. The British had just handed the Nazis their first major defeat.

The "Blitz" continued until the summer of 1941, when Hitler turned his attention toward the Soviet Union.

Fighter Command and Control was the single biggest factor enabling the British to defeat a numerically superior Luftwaffe. Had the Germans established a beachhead in England, they would have been infinitely harder to dislodge from Europe. Thus the free world owes the British-especially Hugh Dowding-a great debt.

Fighter Command and Control was a major part of a flexible--and ultimately superior--military culture. It was the product of a strategic plan five years in the making. The Germans, by contrast, operated ad-hoc.

Moreover, RAF pilots were treated far more kindly than their Luftwaffe counterparts. Dowding often praised his flyers and complimented Operations Room personnel on a "good show." Luftwaffe chief Hermann Göring, on the other hand, verbally abused his airmen and accused them of cowardice.

Furthermore, British and German attitudes toward new technologies were vastly different. Churchill intensely studied technical matters and believed that science was essential for victory. According to British physicist and historian Louis Brown, Hitler and Göring were "both anti-intellectual and scientifically illiterate."

Throughout the war, the Germans had excellent radar but poor operators. For the British, the situation was reversed: they rushed out imperfect equipment to highly proficient technicians, many of whom came from elite physics laboratories and universities.

While the Germans lagged behind the British in the use of radio and radar for defense, they excelled in navigation through clouds and darkness. The Luftwaffe had reliable radio beams for night and overcast flying.

The British, who invented Fighter Command and Control, taught it to the Americans. My father, Eli Ellison, was a Bronx-born radio truck operator with the 327^th Fighter Control Squadron, a 300-soldier outfit of the Ninth Air Force. One of the first things he did upon arriving in England in September 1943 was to start training at RAF bases.

The Allies would soon use Fighter Control offensively. As the Normandy invasion approached, the Americans and British needed trucks that could carry mobile fighter control equipment to support air operations.

Some outfits used radar. Others, like the 327^th, did not. America had entered the war late, and it took considerable time for the Air Corps to get newer sets to soldiers in the field.

Fighter control technicians directed fighter pilots to targets and brought them home when they were lost or hit. Targets for air defense, as in the Battle of Britain, were enemy aircraft. Offensive targets on the ground included bridges, railways, and enemy convoys. Soldiers manning radio trucks were liaisons between lead pilots in five-plane fighter squadrons and controllers in operations blocks.

Fighter bombers directed by Control destroyed more than 900 trucks and 775 pieces of horse-drawn equipment on a typical day.

By manipulating a series of dials on his radio equipment, a transmitter truck operator enabled a controller to speak with a lead pilot. Receiver trucks allowed the controller to hear the pilot.

If a flyer was lost or hit, three radio vans located his position. Monitoring a signal from the aircraft, each fighter control technician would determine the pilot's angle relative to his truck. The technicians then transmitted that information to the controller, who plotted the angles on a chart. The controller, who had a map of all truck sites in the area, pinpointed the pilot by observing where the three angles intersected. He then directed the flyer to safety.

Determining angles was tricky. The fighter control technician manipulated a wheel in his radio truck, which was attached to a 75-foot antenna outside, until the pilot's signal reached the "null" or softest volume. This sound was very similar to that of an aircraft whose bearing was 180 degrees off. If the radio man got the wrong angle, the pilot would fly out to sea, where death was almost certain. During the two years that my dad was overseas, the 327^th Fighter Control Squadron never lost a single pilot.

Radio trucks were spaced at least a mile apart to avoid mass casualty and capture. If a truck was hit, another vehicle quickly took its place.

In January 1944, the Lutftwaffe began another round of heavy night bombing over major British cities. My father's free evenings often began at Royal Opera House dances and ended at the Covent Garden tube shelter.

Although impressive, Allied Fighter Command was not invincible. The August 1942 Anglo-Canadian raid on Dieppe was the busiest day for Fighter Command since the Battle of Britain--and a dismal failure. More than half of 5,000 mostly Canadian soldiers were either killed, wounded, or captured.

When the Normandy invasion began, RAF teams manning three fighter direction tender vessels accompanied the main Allied fleet. But the large number of ships and aircraft, along with the usual IFF mix-ups, made it difficult for radar operators to identify German planes, especially low-flying mine layers.

Because of severe enemy action on the night of June 7, 1944, the 327^th Fighter Control Squadron was unable to land at Grandcamp on Omaha Beach. As the 327^th's LST approached shore, anxious fighter control soldiers watched in horror when a troop transport struck a mine and sunk half a mile aft of starboard. Less than three minutes later, a Liberty ship hit another mine 100 yards away. A Squadron history later recounted: "That ship looked near enough to touch. The evening sky was ablaze with the fingers of lights and gunfire-viciously beautiful in the darkness."

The men of the 327^th were lightly armed technicians, and military brass did not want to waste them on "Bloody Omaha." The radio men were therefore sent back to England, where they bunked in muddy tents near the RAF airfield at Ibsley.

On June 9, the 327^th Fighter Control Squadron began crossing the Channel again, this time in small groups on LCIs. Cpl. Ellison was with a group of 20 radio men traveling with the 79^th Infantry during the wee hours of June 16.

Although he enjoyed his work, my father was always on a guilt trip when he was in the Army. Higher-ups gave fighter control soldiers special perks because they were skilled technicians manning a top-secret system. But my dad felt he didn't deserve the special treatment because he wasn't in combat. And on that LCI at D-plus-10, the contrast between the 327^th Fighter Control Squadron and the 79^th Infantry was stark.

While soldiers in the 327^th bunked in staterooms with comfortable mattresses, infantrymen in the 79^th, burdened with impregnated clothing and heavy packs, slept sitting up on deck. At dawn, Cpl. Ellison and a few friends emerged from their quarters sporting Class "A" uniforms and pleated pants.

A shocked intelligence officer with the 79^th walked up to the radio men and asked, "Where the hell do you think you guys are going to--a dance?"

"Well, sir," Cpl. Ellison replied, "I guess we kinda got our wires crossed."

"You may think your outfit is fucked up," the officer retorted, "but you're the cream of the crop."

After Belgium was liberated in September, the 327^th Fighter Control Squadron was one of the first American outfits to set up headquarters in Verviers, a textile town of 41,000. The 327^th slept in the l'Athénée Royal, a downtown secondary school, but worked in nearby Stembert, a hamlet of white farmhouses and rolling hills. With its higher ground, Stembert allowed radio equipment to function better.

The central government in Brussels rationed each Verviers citizen 1,200 calories of food per day, about half a healthy diet. People supplemented their meals through the black market, which flourished throughout Europe, but they usually didn't make up the difference completely.

My father fell in love with a beautiful Belgian seamstress whom I will call Denise. Whenever my dad visited Denise at her home in Stembert, he would take a second helping from the GI chow line and transport the duplicate meal to a grateful girlfriend.

During the fall of 1944, V-1 buzz bombs rained down upon Verviers by the tens each day. Weapons of terror, they were directly analogous to the roadside bombs and EFPs in Iraq. Buzz bombs and V-2 rockets had no military significance; they killed far more civilians than soldiers. The V-weapons were designed to murder, maim, and terrify as many people as possible to pressure them into demanding a peace settlement.

First used against England a week after the start of the Normandy invasion, buzz bombs were inaccurate and deadly. Like Iraq's roadside bombs and EFPs, nobody knew when or where they'd hit.

"They were little aeroplanes with a light up their arse," remarked a British Home Guard sergeant.

People would point at them as they streaked by. Buzz bombs would rattle and sometimes break store windows when they passed overhead.

"They had the putt-putt sound of a slow motorboat," my dad would say.

But sounds can be deceiving. Powered by noisy pulse-jet engines, buzz bombs flew at 400 mph, the upper limit of most conventional fighters. When an internal onboard counter reached a certain number, the V-1's fuel would typically be cut. Then the bomb would grow silent and go into a dive, giving people on the ground about 15 to 30 seconds to take cover.

But all buzz bombs weren't created equal. Some would start diving, restart, and then continue on a horizontal flight path. Others would drone until impact. Then there were those that flew in coiled patterns, fiendishly mesmerizing bystanders below.

Half the size of a Spitfire, V-1s were tough targets for countermeasures. Radar had a hard time spotting them. They flew at an odd height: 2,000 to 3,000 feet, too high for most light anti-aircraft fire, too low for heavy.

During the summer of 1944, buzz bombs killed over 6,000 British civilians and destroyed 75,000 buildings in the UK. Day fighters could only catch up to the flying bombs if they started above them and caught a good tail wind. Only the fastest night fighters, such as Mosquitoes, could overtake a V-1.

An intercepting pilot had his work cut out for him. To shoot down a V-1, he had to use cannon fire. Bullets couldn't pierce the buzz bomb's hull. Cannon fire was only effective at a close, narrow range-about 200 yards. If the flyer was too far away, he would be ineffective; too close, and he would be killed or blinded by the warhead explosion.

Realizing it was only a matter of time before their bases would be captured, the German High Command began deploying air-launched V-1's using Heinkel 111 bombers.

The Heinkel carried the buzz bomb tucked under its starboard wing. In order to avoid RAF radar, V-1-armed pilots flew night missions over the English Channel at 300 feet. Forty miles from the British coast, they would climb to 1,500 before releasing the buzz bomb. Observers at RAF posts would fire flares toward V-1 positions shown on radar, enabling interceptors to spot them.

In contrast to the V-1, the Allies had no defense against the V-2 rocket. Flying at an altitude of 50 to 56 miles and a maximum speed of 3,800 mph, V-2's struck without warning.

They came down with a "double bang." First was the "sonic boom" that occurs whenever a supersonic aircraft drops below the speed of sound. Warhead detonation immediately followed. V-2's killed more people than did V-1's because the rockets had a bigger warhead, and it was impossible to get out of their way.

When the Battle of the Bulge began at 5 a.m. on December 16, 1944, the Americans were taken by surprise. The evacuation of the city's 56,000 Allied soldiers was chaotic. Travel was slow on snowy, traffic-packed roads.

Several 327^th Fighter Control Squadron sites were overrun. The radio men hunkered down in sub-freezing weather three-and-a-half miles from the Verviers suburb of Spa. There, advancing German infantry captured Pvts. Dexter H. Harris and Roscoe Wingate. They spent the rest of the war in a POW camp.

The Squadron then moved to Liège, 13 miles west of Verviers. The idea was to keep the technicians safe. If the unit suffered heavy losses, air operations over Belgium would be severely compromised.

But fickle fate wasn't kind. Instead of being safer, the Squadron experienced its greatest danger of the war. An industrial hub of the Meuse Valley, Metropolitan Liège had a population of nearly 500,000. It was too big a target for the Germans to pass up.

Instead of being the usual five to ten miles behind front lines, my dad and his buddies were right on front lines. With the possible exceptions of London and Antwerp, Liège suffered the most intense V-weapon attacks of the war. Instead of buzz bombs coming in by the tens per day, as they were in Verviers, they were besieging Liège at over 100 a day.

During this period, 327^th Fighter Control Squadron members worked tough, 12-to-18-hour shifts. My dad took up smoking. He never took a puff before the Battle of the Bulge and never took one after.

Sometime in late December, my father, now a sergeant supervisor, was in the radio van with his corporal. The skies had cleared after several days of fog, and aircraft dotted the skies. Dogfights were so common that my dad could step outside almost anytime and see American and German planes going at it. But he was usually glued to his radio equipment.

A buzz bomb came overhead. Its growling gradually grew into a maddening roar. The corporal wanted to take a drag to calm his nerves, but his hands were shaking so much that he could not put the lit match in contact with the tobacco. Eli Ellison and his radio crew survived unscathed.

Others weren't so lucky. Four enlisted men in the 327^th were killed when a buzz bomb demolished their van.

Although never overrun during the Bulge, Verviers became a closed city protected by a skeleton crew of Allied MPs. Shortly before Christmas 1944, Eli Ellison, armed with a phony pass, sneaked back into town. He could have been arrested, he could have been shot, but he couldn't stay away. He was concerned about Denise and wanted to see her. He would have died for her, nobly or foolishly.

Although Fighter Command and Control didn't win the war, it shortened it. To everyone who made the system work--from Air Chief Marshal Dowding to the lowliest radio truck operator--we should be deeply grateful.

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