Battle of Britain remembered: 70 years on
Updated on 14 June 2010
As the one of the most important battles of the second world war is remembered 70 years on, author and historian Prof Richard Overy writes for Channel 4 News why the victory in Britain's skies still resonates today.
No other battle in Britain’s recent history has been given the same status as the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940.
Although usually seen as a battle between RAF Fighter Command and the German Air Force, the conflict during the summer involved other British forces – RAF Bomber Command, RAF Coastal Command, the Anti-Aircraft forces, the Fleet Air Arm and the Royal Navy.
The Battle of Britain was a collective effort against the threat posed by Hitler’s Germany. It has been fashionable of late to argue that Hitler was not really serious about invading Britain and that the Battle was less decisive than is often thought. There has also been a move to play down the role of Fighter Command and to argue that the mere presence of the Royal Navy was a sufficient deterrent to prevent the German invasion plan, 'Operation Sealion', from ever being launched.
Both these views are misplaced. If the German air fleets had succeeded in winning air superiority over southern England they could have acted as a shield for an invasion force and have intercepted and sunk Royal Navy vessels. German aircraft sank 350,000 tons of shipping in the second half of 1940 and there is nothing to suggest that the Royal Navy would have been immune.
Moreover, the destruction of Fighter Command would have allowed German aircraft to pick and choose their targets in the south and to destroy them with little opposition, as they had done in Poland in September 1939. Once the German air force had air superiority Hitler might have been tempted to run the risk of a cheap invasion in September 1940 and had German troops marching down Whitehall a few weeks later.
It was the failure to undermine British air power that turned the scales in September when Hitler discussed with his commanders the many problems of mounting an invasion. Once Sealion was cancelled, he turned his mind to the invasion of the Soviet Union.
Bomber Command and Coastal Command also contributed to the decision to cancel, but it was the successful operations of Fighter Command, which was stronger at the end of the Battle than it had been at the start, that inflicted the first defeat on the German Air Force and signalled Britain’s determination to continue to defy Hitler.
Seventy years after the event, the Battle of Britain is real history for the majority of the British people. The number of veterans who fought in the Battle has shrunk to two dozen, and the number of Spitfires and Hurricanes still flying is little more. The planes can be seen in flight at air shows at Duxford or Biggin Hill, famous fighter stations during the Battle, and almost all that is physically left of the battlefield.
The memorabilia of the Battle have become a feature of museum exhibitions; it has become an event that seems in some ways as distant as the Somme or Waterloo. Yet it is at the same time alive in the public memory in a way that no other event of the second world war has been kept alive.
The Battle of Britain has become mythologised in the image of a defiant Churchill leading a united people against an overwhelming enemy and triumphing against the odds. Over the past 20 years memorials to the 'few' who flew the fighter aircraft during the Battle – a total of 544 of whom died – have been erected long after the event.
South of Croydon airport in Surrey is the first monument, set up in 1991, a large obelisk topped by a bronze eagle. At Capel-le Ferne in Kent, in the heart of what was known as 'hell’s corner', stands the Battle of Britain National Memorial, a large stone pilot in his flying jacket, staring into the sky beyond. Finally, in September 2005 a Battle of Britain Monument was built on the Victoria Embankment in London, with the names of all those who flew in the Battle, arranged by nationality – the Czechs, Poles, Americans, Canadians, Belgians, and a dozen other nationalities, who also contributed to Britain’s victory.
Why has the myth of the Battle of Britain remained so strong in British culture? It must partly be explained by the fact that this was an acute moment in Europe’s recent history, when Hitler’s Germany seemed poised to achieve a permanent domination of the continent, with all that represented for the future of the races and political groups that the German conquerors were determined to eradicate.
For many British people it seemed that civilisation itself was in the balance during that dangerous summer. This may now seem a rather theatrical reaction, but at the time the danger seemed immense and Churchill articulated what many felt about the weighty responsibility on Britain to keep alive the prospect of resistance.
It will never be known what might have happened if Britain had decided to seek an armistice in 1940 like the French, but it would certainly have created a situation in which the eventual intervention of the United States would have been made less likely and more difficult, while a Germany free to engage in just a one-front war against Stalin’s Soviet Union might have emerged the victor.
There is in the surviving memory of the Battle a proper sense that something decisive was done by defying Hitler.
A second factor lies in the enduring romance of the David and Goliath view of the Battle of Britain. Preventing German invasion did not win the war. At the end of the Battle Hitler’s armies still dominated much of Europe, and were poised to dominate more.
But the contest between the two air forces can be extracted from the reality of the rest of the war and be presented in its own terms, the 'few' bravely defying the many. Historians have now shown that this is partly illusion. German losses of men and aircraft were not easily replaced and Britain had more fighter aircraft and more fighter pilots than the Germans over most of the Battle.
But the sense of fighting against the odds and overcoming is central to a British self-image. It is why Dunkirk can still be presented as if it were a victory rather than an ignominious defeat. It may be why the Battle of Alamein has never had quite the same resonance, because here the balance between Montgomery’s forces and Rommel’s was reversed, the Allied force much stronger than the German enemy.
This 70 anniversary year the books and documentaries and air shows will highlight a familiar story. Yet for all the rhetoric and the historical exaggerations, it remains important for the free world that British defiance was turned in that moment into military success.
Over the following 18 months, in Greece, Crete, Singapore, Burma, the North African desert, Britain faced one humiliation after another. It is indeed a fortunate fact that the one thing Britain’s war effort got right in the early years of the war was the air defence of southern Britain.
It resonates today as a beacon in an otherwise undistinguished story.
Richard Overy is Professor of History at the University of Exeter. He is the author of more than 20 books on the second world war, the history of air power and the European dictatorships. His most recent include The Morbid Age: Britain between the Wars (2009) and 1939: Countdown to War (2009). He is also the author of The Battle of Britain Experience (2010) sponsored by the RAF. In 2010 he was presented with the James Doolittle Award for his contribution to aviation history.
