The Battle of Britain (5): the turning point
If there is one day that is seen to have been decisive in the Battle of Britain, it was 15 September 1940 – 70 years ago today – and, since the war, it has been celebrated as Battle of Britain Day.
Although in reality Royal Air Force claims were three times the actual number of German aircraft destroyed, the Luftwaffe itself recognised that its effort to gain air supremacy for a sea invasion was not going to happen, so Hitler called off the invasion plans, allowing Britain to survive until the Americans entered the war a year or so later.
Although Hurricanes shot down twice as many German aircraft as Spitfires, in the public imagination it is the sleek Spitfire that is most associated with the Battle and today there are many more Spitfires than Hurricanes still flying. As blogged here, I recently saw no less than 16 in the air together:
16 Spitfires as photographed by Josef Vochyan
September 15th, 2010 at 11:49 am
We watched Geoffrey’s story on BBC2 last night.
The sound bit that really brought it all home, was
“he is 18 and we have given him a 1000hp plane and 8 machine guns”.
It is 70 years later and we are still sending ‘kids’ to war.
There has to be another way.