Battle of Britain

 

The historian, who has debunked the Battle, is correct in a lot of ways, but speaking from nearly seventy years on, you can be more detached. The Battle of the Britain fitted the needs of the times, as it showed how a small group of brave men could stop the might of the Germans. Why do we have so many legends about the deeds of knights?

I also remember a French documentary on the battle shown on the BBC in 1965. The makers argued that we are selfish to call it the Battle of Britain. Their view was that it should have been called the Battle of Europe, as if the RAF had lost, it would have been very likely that the whole of western and central Europe would have ended up under German occupation.

The Navy may well have protected us from invasion, if we had lost the Battle of Britain, the Germans would surely have destroyed the RAF, the airfields and the aircraft factories. Would the Navy have been able to survive the Stukas and the other German bombers? Events later in 1941, showed that unarmed ships were no match for air power.

If the Navy has a complaint, then it is about time they got full credit for the Battle of Taranto on November 11th 1940, where a couple of dozen obsolete Swordfish biplanes tore the heart out of the Italian fleet. The methods were not lost on the Japanese.