Battle of Britain
From July to October 1940, the Luftwaffe fought the RAF for control of British airspace, a prerequisite for the planned German invasion of Britain (Operation Sea Lion). The RAF, defending from a network of radar stations and sector airfields under Air Chief Marshal Dowding's coherent command system, inflicted unsustainable losses on German bomber formations flying beyond fighter escort range. Germany shifted to night bombing of civilian targets — the Blitz — but this tactical change abandoned the attritional campaign against RAF airfields that had nearly succeeded. By mid-September Hitler postponed Sea Lion indefinitely. Britain, though battered, was undefeated: the first country to successfully resist Nazi conquest. Churchill's speeches — 'We shall fight on the beaches,' 'Their finest hour,' 'Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few' — became the defining rhetoric of the democratic resistance to fascism. The Battle of Britain's outcome was among the most consequential of the war: had Britain fallen or sued for peace, there would have been no western base from which to launch D-Day, and the United States would have had no European ally.
- Year: 1940 CE
- Category: Military
