A Summer Bright and Terrible Winston Churchill, Lord Dowding, Radar, and the Impossible Triumph of the Battle of Britain

Lord Hugh Dowding, Air Chief Marshall of the Royal Air Force, Head of Fighter Command, First Baron of Bentley Priory, lived in the grip of unseen spirits. In thrall of the supernatural world, he talked to the ghosts of his dead pilots, proclaimed that Hitler was defeated only by the personal intervention of God, and believed in the existence of faeries. How could it be that such a man should be put in charge of evaluating technical developments for the British air ministry? Yet it was he who, fighting the inertia of the bureaucrats who ruled the Air Force, brought the modern multi-gunned fighter into existence. And he insisted that his scientists investigate the mysterious invisible rays that would prove to be the salvation of Britain: radar.

David E. Fisher is the author of twenty-three books, including A Race on the Edge of Time and Fire and Ice. He and his son Marshall John Fisher co-wrote three books--Tube, Strangers in the Night, and Mysteries of the Past. Fisher is currently a professor of cosmochemistry and environmental sciences at the University of Miami, and also teaches graduate courses in theories of war and peace, and the impact of science on history. He holds a Ph.D. in nuclear physics.