Eighty years ago this week an icon of industrial warfare acquires a face and the greatest victor in air warfare receives qualified recognition

 

The memorial day edition of the Saturday Evening Post carried Norman Rockwell's picture of "Rosie the Riveter", made famous by a song the previous year and an emblem of the women hired by the US arms industry to do heavy manual work previously done by men now serving in the military. She is believable, muscular and relaxed. Her rivet-gun is a heavy weapon of industrial warfare. She casually tramples Hitler's Mein Kampf. Today the Rockwell image has been displaced by Howard Miller's desirable, made-up and much less challenging Rosie. Miller's Rosie flexes her biceps for show; Rockwell's Rosie is just strong. Rockwell celebrated the reality; Miller broadcast a propaganda message to women, "You'll not lose your feminity if you do war work."

Hugh Dowding, commander of RAF Fighter Command in the Battle of Britain, was given a peerage, the first of the war for a military commander. It was a reward for his successful work in building Britain's air defence system in the build-up to war as well as command in battle, but the honour masked a complex reality. It was granted by the government but Dowding's profesional colleagues felt no need to promote him beyond the rank of Air Chief Marshal, which he had held since 1936; promotion to Marshal of the Royal Air Force would have been an appropriate recognition, as well as a financial reward. Dowding's achievements had invalidated the precept "the bomber will always get through" on which the RAF's dogma that counter-bombing provided the only defence was founded. He was also personally difficult and argumentative. His case later found a mirror image in that of Arthur Harris, Head of Bomber Command, who was promoted Marshal of the Royal Air Force on his retirement, but did not receive a peerage from the politicians who had no taste for the remorseless efficiency with which he had conducted the campaign of bombing German cities. Harris believed fervently that bombing could win wars.

Admiral Doenitz conceded - in his mind, temporary - defeat in the Battle of the Atlantic confronted by the loss of over forty U-Boats in the huge convoy battles of  May. He withdrew his craft to other areas, notably the South Atlantic, where Allied forces were thinner on the gound. Intelligence soon disclosed this victory to the allies. And it was victory; the new, high performance U-Boat types and weaponry on which Doenitz counted to relaunch the campaign were never to have a decisive effect. The Germans could still inflict grievous loss, but the danger that Britain could be cut off completely had gone.