Monday our bus brought us to “Bentley Priory Museum” –
“from where the battle was won“!
This beautiful country house, near Watford 25 km northwest of London, was the Headquarters of…
…Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain. These gate-guards outside… 
…and beautiful stained glass windows inside shows the importance of this building.
Before the war Hugh Dowding was the Air Member for Supply and Research at the Air Ministry. In that capacity he oversaw two vital developments. The first was the development of fast fighter aircraft and the second was to provide funding for the first experimental RADAR (then known as RDF) stations on the coast.
Bentley Priory was the base for Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, Commander-in-Chief of RAF Fighter Command, during the Battle of Britain. At the beginning of the war, 16 May 1940, Dowding said:
“I believe that, if an adequate fighter force is kept in this country, if the fleet remains in being, and if Home Forces are suitably organized 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 situation in France, defeat in France will involve the final, complete and irremediable defeat of this country.”
Dowding oversaw the world’s first integrated system of air defence, which became known as the ‘Dowding System’. After the war he said:
“Mine was the purely defensive role of trying to stop the possibility of an invasion, and thus giving the country a breathing spell … it was Germany’s objective to win the war by invasion, and it was my job to prevent such an invasion from taking place.”
Among other things to explore the Bentley Priory has this beautiful circular room. Here the museum tells the story of “the few” using photographs, medals and artefacts relating to the aircrew, including log-books. A few examples:
Group Captain Dennis “Hurricane” David fought in the Battle of France, the Battle of Britain and against the Japanese in South East Asia. Flying Hurricanes he had 20 confirmed and 5 unconfirmed destroyed enemy aircraft. After the war, as an air attache in Budapest, he helped 400 Hungarians to flee the Soviets and became known as “The Light Blue Pimpernel”.
Squadron leader Thomas Clifford “Tony” Iveson fought in the Battle of Britain as a Spitfire pilot but later qualified as a Lancaster pilot as part of the famous “Dambuster” bomber squadron and he took part in the sinking of “Tirpitz” in Norway. 
Wing Commander Vernon C. “Woody” Woodward sailed from Canada to England to join the RAF. He started flying the Gladiator in Egypt where he earned the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC), then Hurricanes in Greece and Crete. After some time as a flying instructor in Rhodesia he returned to Egypt and later moved to the Middle East flying transport aircraft. “Woody” was Canada’s second highest scoring pilot of the war with a combat record of 4 destroyed, 2 unconfirmed destroyed, 3 probables and 11 damaged enemy aircraft.
