Thanks to American Thinker’s Bruce Walker for reminding us of this anniversary:
Seventy-five years ago, July 10, 1940, one of the most signal battles in the history of war and one of the clearest demarcations between the evils of totalitarianism and the virtues of resisting that evil began in the skies over southern Britain. The Battle of Britain – Churchill coined the term – was a struggle between an experienced and battle-hardened Luftwaffe and the “chicks” (the young men, most of whom would die) of Fighter Command of the Royal Air Force.
Military historians today look back on this two-month battle and question whether Britain would have fallen had the battle been lost. Germany certainly lacked the fleet and the landing craft for an invasion of Britain, but perhaps the best response to this argument is that everyone thought that losing this battle would force Britain to seek peace. War, as we are learning, again, in our fourteen-year war with radical Islam, is about the will of the opponent.
The last of Churchill’s famous 1940 wartime addresses is summarized best in the line “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” The Luftwaffe was not fighting the British Army or Royal Navy or even the RAF. The Luftwaffe’s campaign was to destroy Fighter Command, a relatively small part of the RAF under the command of Sir Hugh Dowding, a fussbudget who had stayed on past retirement but the perfect man for the task.
Read more: American Thinker
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons — the pilots of No. 303 (Polish) Squadron, the highest-scoring Allied unit in the Battle of Britain.
