Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war.

If we stand up to him, all of Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit up lands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the united states, including all that we have loved and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the light of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its common wealth last for a thousand years, men will say This was their finest hour. (Winston Churchill) The Battle of Britain The battle of Britain was in the autumn of 1940. At this time Britain was on its own as France had surrendered and Dunkirk had evacuated. The Germans were planning an attack on Britain which they code named Operation Sealion. Here was their plan

But they needed air dominance if they were going to invade using a fleet so that they would not get bombed during the journey over. This meant that they needed to destroy the British fighter control. This was led by Sir Hugh Dowding. A major advantage the Germans had was that the British had lost many pilots in the war in France and they had not been replaced.

In 1940 51 radar bases had been built around the south coast of England. These were important because they gave Britain an early warning as to when and where the Germans would attack. Britain also had the Royal Observer Corp (ROC) which used things like binoculars to do the same job. The British had over 1000 of these. But the main advantage we had was that British fighter planes could spend far longer in the air before having to return to get fuel and ammunition. The German fighter planes had to go back after a short period of time over Kent and Sussex. This left their bombers extremely open to attack from British fighter planes. The Battle of Britain started on 10th July 1940 where the Luftwaffe (Germans RAF) tried to take the straits of Dover. They were trying to tempt the RAF into a full scale attack. By the end of July the Luftwaffe had lost 268 planes and the RAF had lost 150. In August the Luftwaffe started to attack operation rooms, radar bases and air fields of the RAf. The point of this was to hopefully destroy fighter command on land and not need to fight them in the air. If they achieved this then communication would be difficult, early warnings would be down to the ROC and destroying airfields would make it difficult to take off. August 15th was an important day because almost all the stuka (dive bombers) were destroyed so pin-point bombing was very difficult. Luckily bad weather prevented daily raids. From 23rd august to the 6th of September the Luftwaffe started daily raids on cities. Six out of seven main fighter bases in south-east England were hit badly and put out of action. These raids were known as the blitz. Although the Germans seemed to be doing very well they were still losing more planes than the RAF. 1000 German loses to 550 RAF loses. The decision of the head of the Luftwaffe, Herman Goering, to stop the raids on the radar bases as he thought that they were too unimportant to matter, helped the British a lot. Because of this the radar station at ventnor on the Isle of Wight functioned throughout the battle giving fighter command vital information. The lack of bombings gave fighter command time to recover and for the pilots to catch up on sleep as they worked many hours a day and most were exhausted. The last major battle was on 15th of September. The Luftwaffe lost 60 planes then when the RAF lost 28.

On September 17th Hitler postponed the invasion of Britain though the night time raids continued. At the end of the war the RAF said they shot down 2,698 German planes when it was actually around 1,100. The RAF lost around 650 when the Germans said they shot down 3,058- more than the entire RAF.

At the end of the battle, Winston Churchill said: "Never in the field of human

conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."

Background information At the start of the War the Germans had 4,000 aircraft. Britain had 1,660. By the time France had surrendered Germans had 3,000 planes in northwest Europe alone. This included 1,400 bombers, 300 dive bombers, 800 single engine fighter planes and 240 twin engine fighter planes. At the start of the battle the luftwaffe had 2,500 serviceable planes. They could send around 1,600 planes on a normal day. The Britons had 1,200 planes. This included 800 spitfires and Hurricanesonly 660 on these were serviceable.

Planes The main planes used by the British were the Spitfire and the Hurricane. Here are some pictures of them:

A Hurricane

A Spitfire

The main planes used by the Germans were the Messcherschmitt and the stukas. Here are some pictures of them:

A stuka

A Messcherschmitt

The spitfire was the most important plane on the British RAF because although it was slower than the Messcherschmitt it was far more manoeuvrable. Its max speed was 361mph and it had eight .303 inch machine guns. The problem with the spitfire was that if it was hit then it could easily catch fire. This made it very dangerous for the pilot, as the cockpit was difficult to get out of. There were 12 squadrons of spitfires in the battle of Britain.

The Hurricane was slower than the spitfire but it could take far more hits and keep flying. It was also very steady and had a good shooting platform. There were 32 squadrons of the hurricane in the battle of Britain and so was the dominant plane in the battle. The stukas were dive bombers and so were used for precision bombing. They were used to bomb the fighter command bases. However they were all but destroyed early on and so precision bombing was very difficult. The messcherschitt had unique engine that meant it could dive away from enemies much faster than them and so escape trouble. However it had a small fuel capacity. This was important because it meant that the German bombers werent always protected. This left them very open for British fighters. Its max speed was 385mph and its range was 373 miles.

Ground defences As the whole reason for the Battle of Britain was to launch an attack on Britain, land defences had to be made. The British had 25 divisions defending its coast where as the Germans were going to send over 20 divisions. However the German infantry was far better trained. The Britons had to consider airborne invasions, though this was unlikely. The British couldnt pull back all its defences as it was important to maintain its position abroad. In preparation for the invasion the British gave two very senior Generals very important roles. General Sir John Dill was the chief of the imperial General staff and General Sir Alan Brooke was the commander-inchief of the home forces.

The Americans had also given us: 500,000 rifles, 80,000 machine guns, 130,000,000 rounds of ammunition, 900 75-mm guns and 100,000,000 shells. The British also had 200 tanks of their own. Eye witness

Now having done this project I realise the unbelievable importance of the Battle of Britain. If the British had not won, then there is a very great possibility that the Germans would have conquered us, and the world today would have been enormously different.