A Spitfire fighter-plane from the Battle of Britain flying over Birdingbury Country Festival in Warwickshire, in 2009.
BY the summer of 1940, Nazi Germany had acquired control over most of Western Europe and Scandinavia, and Adolf Hitler confidently attacked RAF bases in southern England in August that year.
The stinging rebuff he received surprised him, so he ordered a sustained aerial assault on the civilians of London. His plan was to undermine public morale, and pave the way for ‘Operation Sea Lion’, the invasion of Britain.
The attacks began on the 7th of September, and reached a crisis on Sunday 15th, when 630 British fighter planes battled almost twice as many German aircraft.
After that, the relentless bombing began to ease, and although the air raids on London, dubbed ‘the Blitz’, continued until May the following year, Hitler now knew that Britain’s small but plucky RAF was a match for his Luftwaffe. As Prime Minister Winston Churchill had said, back on 20th August, ‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few’.
Précis
The Battle of Britain took place in August and September 1940, beginning as a German assault on RAF bases and moving on to a sustained bombing campaign against civilian targets in London, marking the start of the Blitz. The cost to Britain was high, but it was a defeat for Germany, as the Luftwaffe failed to achieve air supremacy. (58 / 60 words)
