By Geoff Simpson FRHistS
There were so many battles in the 20th century. Why does the Battle of Britain, part of the Second World War, receive so much attention?
The answer is that in the spring, summer and autumn of 1940 world, not merely British, history was at a major turning point. German forces had spread across northern Europe. Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxumbourg and much of France were occupied.
When the French government capitulated in June 1940 the possibility had to be faced that an invasion of England would follow. Some senior British politicians believed that this was the moment to seek an accommodation with Germany. The new Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, was determined to fight on but had no easy task in winning the argument.
Thank goodness that he did. When Churchill told the House of Commons that Britain would, “wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime, he was surely hardly overstating his case.”
If the invasion had been accomplished, British people would, of course, have suffered greatly. The situation was far worse than that though.
How would the fight have been carried on? Without the UK as an “aircraft carrier” off the European mainland, how would the re-conquest of Europe have been undertaken?
So the world teetered and so the Battle of Britain came to be fought because in modern warfare invasion without the initial achievement of air superiority is close to impossible.
Perhaps the Luftwaffe did achieve superiority over the English Channel, though many German aircrew came to regard that stretch of water with considerable foreboding. However, Fighter Command, the Few, remained in control over southern England and so, in mid-September 1940, Adolf Hitler decided there would be no invasion at least until the following year.
Exactly what Churchill meant when he spoke of the Few has often been debated. The aircrew themselves, in later years, frequently remembered all those who had supported them, in other parts of the RAF, the other services and civilians in many capacities.
When the Battle of Britain Clasp to the 1939-1945 Star was announced in May 1945 the controversial decision was that only the fighter aircrew would receive it. At the parochial level there was dispute too over which men of Fighter Command should have been given entitlement to the clasp. It took 15 years to finalise the list of 71 accredited units. Only an authorised operational flight with one of those between 10 July and 31 October 1940 gained an airman the Clasp.
Probably anybody who has made any study of the Battle, would come up with a different definition, frequently with different dates and a wider range of people qualifying. A problem often overlooked is that after eight and more decades we have still not achieved a final list of the qualifying fighter aircrew. How much more of a struggle it woud have been to identify all those qualifying if say, groundcrew had been included.
There are those who have spent many hours over many years researching the mysteries of the Battle of Britain. Their successors will have the opportunity to do the same. There is still so much that we do not know.
Geoff Simpson, FRHistS, is consulting editor for the Battle of Britain Memorial Trust’s Database of the Few.
