There are so many anniversaries related to the Second World War, that some of them tend to escape many people’s notice. This year we have quite rightly marked the 80th anniversaries of VE and CJ day in 1945. But today, I would argue is even more important than those, and without today’s anniversary, we might not only have not had VE Day, we would most probably all be speaking German now.
The dogfights over the skies of Britain between June and December 1940 became known as the Battle of Britain, after Winston Churchill’s famous war speech on 15 June 1940 in which he declared:
“What General Weygand called the 'Battle of France' is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of a perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was their finest hour"
And begin it did, on 10 July with the Luftwaffe attacking British ports, including the Portsmouth naval base. It continued throughout the summer and autumn with ever increasing devastation wrought not just on military targets and population centres, but bombs were dropped on seemingly innocent countryside targets, or planes crashed in wheatfields having been shot down – both British and German. One crash landed a few hundred yards from the farmhouse I grew up in, near Ashdon in north Essex. My friend’s grandmother perished as she attempted to extricate the German pilot from the burning wreckage of the fallen Messerschmitt.
Bystanders would watch in awe as the Spitfires took on the might of the German Messerschmitts, as many of the raids took place during daylight hours.
The casualty figures were grim. The attacks resulted in 23,000 British civilian deaths and 32,000 injured. 1,542 British airmen lost their lives, with a further 422 wounded. 1,744 aircraft were destroyed. On the German side, figures were similar with 2,585 Luftwaffe members killed and 735 wounded. 1,977 of their aircraft were destroyed with a further 735 captured.
Robert Jenrick has made an excellent video to mark today’s anniversary of the most brutal attack launched on Britain during the entirety of the Battle for Britain. However, he (and, to be fair, many others, gets one thing wrong.
"In the summer of 1940 Britain stood alone, he says". No it didn't. Britain and its massive empire of 500 million people and all the heroic pilots from nations including Poland and Czechoslovakia, played a vital part in the victory and they must never be forgotten.
Why was winning the Battle of Britain so important? Quite simply, it saved Britain from a land invasion. Hitler knew that without air dominance, he couldn’t launch a land invasion. So he turned his attention to expanding to the east and decided to invade the Soviet Union.
Some revisionist historians nowadays tend to play down the importance of the Battle of Britain and say Hitler would never have invaded anyway. I suspect they’re exactly the same sort of people who protested that Putin would never have invaded Ukraine. Until he did.
Let’s remember that many of the pilots of fought so valiantly in the Battle of Britain were as young as 19 years of age. Bravery is an adequate word to sum up what they did. They all knew that a high proportion of them wouldn’t come back from the various sorties they launched.
This is why it’s so important that today’s younger generations not only know about, but understand the importance of the Battle of Britain, yet according to a new survey that shows that around 40 per cent of 18 year olds have never heard of the Battle of Britain. That is a scandal. Does anyone imagine that American teenagers have never heard of the Civil War? Or Spanish children don’t know about their own civil war? It’s an indictment on our education system that so many young people know nothing of so many aspects of their own country’s history.
The Spitfire pilots really were the bravest of the brave. It was indeed not only THEIR finest hour, as Churchill predicted. It was our country’s.
It was quite possibly the most significant few months in the history of our great nation, and we should remember that victory more than we do.