“If the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, then the Battle for Britain will be won on the playing fields of Malvern”.

These were the dramatic words that A P Rowe, Superintendent of the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) said to himself as he stood in his office in the clock tower of Malvern College in the summer of 1942.

Rowe had long been involved in the development of radar but it was over the course of the next three years of the Second World War that all the great radar discoveries were made and they were made by the scientists ( or boffins ) of TRE and were then test flown by the crews of the Telecommunications Flying Unit ( TFU ) based at RAF Defford, across the Vale of Evesham. On a clear day Rowe could see the airfield from his office window.

Rowe was born in 1898 and, being of a scientific bent, had graduated with first class honours in physics from the University of London (UCL) in 1921. Specialising in air navigation he was soon working for the Air Ministry. As with many of his contemporaries he had visited post war Germany and could see the signs and direction of German recovery. In 1937 he succeeded Robert Watson Watt as the superintendent of the Bawdsey Research station, developing the ground radar system that became known as Chain Home, a series of fixed radar masts that stretched from Wick in Scotland down the east coast and then along the channel coast as far as Exeter. Linked to Fighter Command HQ, the masts played a vital part in winning the Battle Britain in the summer of 1940. The scientists now turned their attention to the development of airborne radar, made possible thanks to the cavity magnetron.

To assist Bomber Command, a navigational mapping system H2S was developed. Airborne interception radar was developed to help our night fighters; Gee, Oboe and Window all followed, helping to improve the ability of the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy. Every week for the rest of the war, senior aircrew and senior scientists met in Rowe’s office to discuss the future conduct of the war. These meetings became known as the Sunday Soviets. For his work Rowe was awarded the CBE. In his obituary published in the Times in 1976, his contemporary, Sir Bernard Lovell, commented that his work had never been properly recognised with the knighthood that he surely deserved and that was given to so many of his contemporaries.

Clearly disgruntled, Rowe emigrated to Australia where he became chief scientific adviser to the Australian Department of Defence. In1948 he was appointed Vice Chancellor of the University of Adelaide, returning to live in England in 1957. He died in 1976.

He wrote in1942 that the Battle for Britain will be won on the playing fields of Malvern. And it was.