It has to be Dowding; my personal preference would be Adrian Warburton but not many will have even heard of him.
As for DB, apart from lying about being shot down etc, he treated everyone - especially his 'batman' at Colditz - like crap, and only lost his legs through bufoonery; I used to work with a chap who'd been young groundcrew at Tangmere, they held a party the night he didn't return !
I also met a Spitfire pilot shot down and imprisoned early on in the B of B; for a while he was in the same camp as DB. He remarked that while he had a good fighting spirit, " yes, we all had a good word for Bader, but I can't say it in front of your wife "...