Britain, Battle of

Britain, Battle of, protracted conflict between the British Royal Air Force (RAF) and the German Luftwaffe during World War II, which reached its height in August-September 1940, and dealt Nazi Germany its first major defeat of the war. The Battle of Britain thwarted the intention of Adolf Hitler to invade Britain, and was summed up by Winston Churchill, who, in the aftermath, declared: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

Following the fall of France in June 1940, Britain held out alone against Hitler's forces, and for a while Britain's only credible defence was the RAF's Fighter Command, which had been largely kept in reserve at bases in the south of England. With his ground forces halted at the English Channel, Hitler launched an initial attempt to win command of the skies over Britain by aerial bombardment, as a prelude to the annihilation of British naval and airborne defences and the invasion of the British Isles by sea (Operation Sealion). The forces engaged in the massive air battle that followed were disproportionate. The Luftwaffe under its supreme commander Hermann Göring, operating mainly from airfields in Belgium and France, had a total of about 2,670 planes—1,015 bombers (Junkers JU-88s, Dornier DO-17s, and Heinkel HE-111s), 350 dive-bombers (Junkers JU-87 Stukas), 930 fighters (Messerschmitt ME-109s), and 375 heavy fighters (Messerschmitt ME-110s). Against this huge force, the RAF commander Air Chief Marshal Lord Hugh Dowding counted no more than 650 RAF Spitfires and Hurricanes in 52 squadrons.

Outnumbered though they were, the British forces had certain advantages that were to prove crucial as the fighting progressed. First, the British fighters were faster and more manoeuvrable than their German opponents. Secondly, just before the outbreak of war, the British had constructed a chain of radar early-warning stations (at the behest of Dowding), which enabled them to gauge the strength and course of incoming enemy aeroplane formations and concentrate superior numbers of their own forces to meet them. Radar also enabled the British to dispense with constant patrols, a vital saving in fuel and human energy. Thirdly, the British were flying from home bases with home-controlled lines of communication, allowing them to constantly use and refuel short-range fighters in the continuing battle, whereas the Germans had to return to French airfields. Fourthly, a British pilot shot down unwounded over Britain could be back in action within hours, while a German pilot was definitively lost.

The initial heavy air attack on Britain, on July 10, 1940, involved wave after wave of fighter-escorted bombers directed against the shipping and harbours of southern England. This phase reached a climax on August 15, when 76 bombers were shot down with a loss of 34 RAF fighters. The second phase of Marshal Hermann Göring's offensive, directed against British air defence installations, was the most critical: from August 24 to September 6, German raids destroyed 466 Hurricanes and Spitfires, with 103 British pilots killed and 128 badly wounded, a quarter of the total British pilot strength. German losses may have been twice as great in men and machines, but at this crisis point the hard-pressed RAF was within an ace of defeat. Fortunately, on September 7, Hitler and Göring suddenly switched the Luftwaffe's attacks away from airfields and air defences to London, in response to a British bombing attack on Berlin, which was itself a reprisal for a mistaken German raid on the British capital. The Blitz which ensued killed around 45,000 British civilians, but gave the RAF time to repair its ruined airfields and concentrate once more on effective defence.

In its attacks on London and other British towns and cities, the Luftwaffe sustained such gigantic losses that Göring was forced to switch to night bombing. It was immediately clear to the British that this was an acknowledgement of the Luftwaffe's failure to win daylight air supremacy. When, on September 14-15, RAF Bomber Command succeeded in destroying huge numbers of the invasion barges the Germans had assembled across the English Channel, Hitler suspended all preparations for Operation Sealion. It was a turning point. The last German daylight attack took place on September 30: the Luftwaffe continued to bomb British towns and cities nightly for months afterwards, but it had conclusively lost the contest for control of the air space over the British Isles.