Richard Playne Stevens - the superpowered 1941 genius of night fighter interception

"Steve" Stevens beside his black painted Hawker Hurricane Mk I - credited by his biographer with 15.5 "kills" at night, without the use of on-board radar. He does not look like a nice person - and he wasn't .

I have a fascination with nightfighters of World War II - both the pilots and the radar-operators; and have read several biographies and memoirs of the species. 

Interception and destruction of enemy night bombers became highly desirable after the daylight Battle of Britain turned into the nocturnal Blitz in the autumn of 1940; but although the RAF made considerable efforts, there was essentially no success for many months; due the inadequate aircraft (the too-slow, feebly-armed, Bristol Blenheim) and the primitive on-board radar and inexperienced operators. 

It was only in the winter of 1940 when the fast and heavily-armed, two crew and two-engined, Bristol Beaufighter and better radar became available (and on-board radar expertise, and pilot-operator teamwork, began to develop); that the first successful interceptions began to occur from the exceptionally brilliant duo of John Cunningham and Jimmy Rawnsley. 

But from January of 1941 through to his death not-quite a year later, by far the leading nightfighter was Richard Playne Stevens, who flew the single-crew, single-engine, day-fighter the Hawker Hurricane. He rapidly accumulated "kills" - starting with two kills in one night on 15/16 January, and repeating a double on several more occasions. 

Stevens was instantly propelling into national heroic status with a Distinguished Flying Cross and Bar (i.e. awarded twice) followed by a Distinguished Service Order shortly before his death - The DSO being the highest award for operational gallantry in the UK, except the Victoria Cross.  

The extraordinary thing about Stevens is that he did not use on-board radar, but relied upon his truly exceptional - indeed apparently unique - night vision; combined with exceptional marksmanship. 

In the many accounts of the best fighter pilots from the first and second World Wars, this combination of attributes comes up again and again: exceptional eyesight and marksmanship. These were what, above all, set the aces (or Experten for the Germans) above the rest. 

So it is perhaps unsurprising that the best nightfighter pilot of this first year of the craft, was distinguished above all by the best night eyesight that anyone could remember. 

In late 1940, John Cunningham had been dubbed "Cat's Eyes" by the newspapers, because RAF propagandists falsely claimed that his early successes were due to exceptional night vision, in order to conceal the development of on-board radar. 

But this was not true: John Cunningham did not have exceptional night vision, and radar was essential for his kills. 

However, Richard Playne Stevens really did have astonishing "Cat's Eyes" ability to find, recognize, and destroy enemy bombers when nobody else could do this! His superb vision even extended to an ability to take off and land, and navigate, in appalling weather conditions of clouds and fog; conditions that grounded the rest of the RAF.    

It would not be too much of a stretch to say that Stevens eyesight was akin to the superpower of a comic superhero! - in the sense that his vision was qualitatively superior to everyone else, and it enabled him to do things impossible to normal people. 

As Cunningham himself said: "It was Stevens - and not me - who was unique in being the only really successful "Cat's Eyes" nightfighter pilot in the whole Royal Air Force".  

RP Stevens was also characterized by exceptionally-high, focused and sustained motivation to do that at which he excelled - he wanted to do that, and nothing else would suffice. 

It was my long term interest in the phenomenon of genius that spurred me to read the biography of RP Stevens - Lone Wolf by Andy Summers and Terry Thompson (2019). It seemed that RPS probably had at least two of the three qualities that I had identified as characteristic of the species: exceptional ability and motivation. 

I wanted to discover whether he had an "endogenous" personality - i.e. whether he was unusually inwardly-attentive and inwardly-dominated. Such an endogenous bias has, as an almost inevitable consequence, social consequences; caused by unusual indifference to other people and their feelings or approval.  

This abnormal psychology manifests variously; perhaps as "eccentricity", or even craziness ("psychoticsm"), or sometimes a psychopath-like selfishness and wilfullness. 

 

The biography revealed that Stevens was indeed an "endogenous personality". The title "Lone Wolf" reflects this - he wanted, indeed insisted, on working alone and doing what he wanted. 

At the time; this was uniquely possible for nightfighter pilots, perhaps above all other fighting military personnel. 

Probably, this is why I am so interested in WWII nightfighters: they retained the individualist and distinctive attitudes and behaviours that characterized many of the best 1914-18 war pilots.   

More exactly, it is clear that Stevens was an unpleasant and generally disliked person - going right back to childhood, through schooldays, pre-war work, and into the war: Friendless, tending to blame others, and with a cruel streak. 

As an extreme example, RPS put it about that his wife and children had been killed in the Blitz and that this had filled him with a consuming hatred of Germans and an obsessive desire to kill them. This was widely reported in the press and believed by his RAF colleagues and has been repeated in subsequent histories and memoirs; but it was not true. 

Instead Stevens had a wife and son who were alive, in Sussex; but completely ignored and never visited after the funeral of his beloved toddler-age daughter, who died in a household fire for which he apparently blamed his wife. 

Richard Playne Stevens is therefore an instance of something often seen with geniuses: that they are very difficult people to have around, and they seldom fit into the bureaucratic structures of modern society. 

If society wants the fruits of genius, then there is no alternative but to put up with their difficult behaviour and often unlikeable personalities. 

More than this, a genius must be allowed and sustained-in a niche, an unique environment and situation. In all the RAF it is likely that there was no other pilot who operated in the way that Stevens did; none who were allowed to do their own thing in such an autonomous fashion. 

Britain in the 1940s was the kind of place that enabled geniuses to survive, and indeed thrive. 

The result was that Britain got the society-wide benefits of a wide range of individual geniuses: those unique people who could do what nobody else could do. 

But Britain in 2024 is actively hostile to the genius type - with the consequence that any incipient geniuses are aggressively excluded from the influential and effective social milieu; and most potential genius achievements (which are typically dissonant with prevailing mainstream ideology) will be ignored: in fact suppressed.