At thirty he was too old for a fighter pilot, but he became the greatest of RAF fighter pilots. Adolph ‘Sailor’ Malan was not a gifted, instinctive pilot, but he became one. He was an exceptional shot, extraordinarily aggressive in air combat, a brilliant tactician, a great leader in the air, and a strict disciplinarian. Unlike many fighter pilots then and now, he was not a line-shooter or a big ego.
He devised ten commandments, his rules for air fighting, which guided and saved the lives of countless British and American fighter pilots in the Second World War and since. He had good, basic values and cared about the men in his command. He spent extra time with the newest and least experienced of them, showing them the ropes and doing all he could to keep them from making the kinds of mista... (查看原文)
Dowding was determined that all the available Spitfires would be retained in England for the protection of Britain when the great air campaign he was expecting came that summer. He had been busy during the Phoney War period, establishing his air defence system of radar installations, airfields, aircraft, pilots, the Observer Corps, barrage balloons and anti-aircraft batteries. In his powerful memo of April 18th 1940 to the Under Secretary for Air, he wrote: “I believe that if an adequate fighter force is kept in this country, if the Fleet remains in being, and if the Home Forces are suitably organised 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... (查看原文)
还没人写过短评呢