Air Chief Marshal Arthur Tedder D-Day

Dr Peter Caddick-Adams, military historian, explains the appointment of Air Chief Marshal Arthur Tedder #DDay70RAF .

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[redspinifex]

The then Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder was and is one of the great unsung heroes of the Western Allies in the European theatre. His 1966 memoir _With Prejudice_ is an excellent read and most insightful.

[lychan]

I'm surprised to learn that Arthur Tedder was even elevated to RAF's Air Chief Marshal in the first place, much less become a deputy to Eisenhower. When he was the Air Officer Commanding (AOC) of RAF Far East from 1936 to 1938, Tedder sited the RAF airbases in northern Malaya without any real consultation with the British army and navy, in the mistaken RAF belief that a war could be won by independent air action alone. He decided to locate these airbases as close to the east coast of Malaya as possible, to increase their striking range over the sea.

But this put them right in the path of any invasion. The dispersion of these airbases also made it difficult for the army to defend these airbases in strength and in-depth. This later forced GOC Malaya LTG Arthur Percival to disperse his land forces in small groups to defend over a wide area.

Source: Professor Brian P. Farrell, The Defence and Fall of Singapore 1940-1942, Tempus Publishing 2006, Chapter 2: The Roads to War, pages 56-60.

Without concentration of British defences, the 25th Imperial Japanese Army could penetrate and defeat the defenders in detail. Its troops seized these airbases soon after landing in northern Malaya, so that its airplanes could attack and harass the British army down the Malayan peninsula and Singapore, with shorter warning time for the defenders.

[robertsmith]

There's a Tedder Road on the site of the old RAF Uxbridge

[cheesetomato]

No this actor is playing Air Chief Marshall sir Hugh Dowding of fighter command