Battle of Britain – The Few Who Saved Britain

Image by The Library of Congress via Flickr

Operation Dynamo had seen approximately 300,000 men of the BEF brought to safety by a flotilla of ships making the journey between England to Dunkirk over a number of days. So now Hitler had his sights on England. The white cliffs of Dover were clearly visible as the German High Command peered past the English Channel from Calais.

However, until the skies over England were under German command, Hitler wasn’t able to authorise Operation Sealion – the invasion of United Kingdom. With America being reluctant to take part in the war at this stage and her Allies vanquished, Great Britain would need to face the Germans on it’s own.

Could Britain hold out until the summer was over when the weather would thwart the Germans from crossing the Channel? British hopes was in the hands of the brave pilots of the Royal Air Force, “The Few” as Churchill later referred to them. It wasn’t merely British airmen in the RAF, the Commonwealth was represented with pilots from an array of colonial outposts like as South Africa and Rhodesia as well as Poles and even a couple of Americans.

Hitler despatched his bombers over to pound United Kingdom into submission but yet crucially, their fighter escorts at best had the fuel for only a few minutes battle before they would have to go back home leaving the bombers unprotected. For the first time, the Luftwaffe were up against solid resistance and there was to be no repeat of their swift victories on the Continent. Britain’s airfields in the south east were suffering a beating until a particular night in August 1940, a German bomber got lost and dropped its bombs over London before returning home. In retaliation, the RAF launched an air raid on Berlin.

Hitler was furious and instructed his aircraft to attack London and not the RAF airfields. This was a decisive turning point as it gave the RAF some much needed relief. The Luftwaffe failed to achieve the upper hand at any point and in mid September, Hitler indefinitely postponed Operation Sealion. The risk of attack was gone and Churchill spoke of the contribution of Fighter Command in a widely known speech “Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few”.

The foremost fighter ace was Sgt Frantisek from the Czech Republic with a total of 17 kills. He piloted a Hawker Hurricane which was the true workhorse of Fighter Command even if almost everyone remembers the iconic Spitfire. Sgt Frantisek died in October 1940.

The Battle of Britain was the first time the Germans had suffered a military defeat during World War II.