Oops

BBC again.

Ewan McGregor and his brother Colin did a very good retrospective on the Battle of Britain a few nights ago. They both ended up flying around in a truly ugly two-seat Spitfire (which the RAF never used) but, overall, it wasn't bad.

Ewan (or his script writer, let's be fair) did make one horrible gaffe.

He was describing the tensions in the upper ranks of Fighter Command as the Battle got more and more desparate and highlighted the feud between Keith Park (OC 11 Group) and "Douglas Bader who commanded 12 Group".

Wrong.

During the Battle of Britain, Douglas Bader was a Squadron Leader commanding 242 Squadron based at Duxford and a small part of 12 Group. Air Vice-Marshall Leigh-Mallory - not Bader - was Park's opposite (in more ways than one) in charge of 12 Group based north of London. As it turned out, most of Bader's theories were simply wrong. Thank God we had AVM Keith Park in charge of 11 Group (in whose skies most of the Battle took place) and not Leigh-Mallory or (worse!) Bader.

The outcome might have been very different.

PS: Park also "won" the other crucial defensive air action of the war - the Battle of Malta.