Easy Street (your #25),
I take your point. As it happens, I spent a tour in the early '50s as the Adjutant of an (Auxiliary) Fighter Control Unit, and though not in the Fighter Control Branch myself, of course knew that our main purpose was to train an immediately available reserve of Fighter Controllers, Radar Operators and Fighter Plotters for the ROTOR stations.
In an (ill-fated !) Open Letter to my troops and enquirers, I wrote (of the history of the early days): "
These enabled us to use our few precious Spitfires and Hurricanes only when and exactly where they were needed, and not wasted on largely futile Standing Patrols".
Certainly these underground Control stations (wartime precursors of ROTOR, and "holes" in our parlance !), of which Uxbridge was the best known, and the Chain Home radars, were a vital part of the BoB, without which we would certainly have lost the war. But without Bomber Command, we would have been unable to avenge the "Blitz" and batter the Third Reich into submission - or at least to take a major part in doing so. "
They have sown the Wind", quoted Harris, "
They will reap the Whirlwind" (and they did !)
I would dispute your conclusion that, "
in a contest" (with Bomber Command) "
for limited public funding, securing the commemoration of the Battle of Britain should trump it".
Without the BoB, there would have been no Bomber Command, it is true. But in the the context of the astronomical sums which the MOD seems to have seen vanish down its "black hole", the cost of the Bomber Memorial would have been trifling. There is a nasty suspicion that the (almost wholly post-war) bitter denigration of Harris and his men played a part here: our ("Politically Correct") modern Politicians wanted to be seen as sympathetic to that widely disseminated calumny.
The 55,573 dead of Bomber Command deserve better of their country.
But as Chugalug says (#32):
"As to the significance of the battles, that is again a matter of opinion of course. Mine is that the BoB saved us from losing the war in 1940, the Battle of Germany enabled victory in 1945. Goering declared the BoB a draw. Even he could scarcely say the same of 1945!"
That puts it in a nutshell, IMHO.
Danny42C.