Wings.Of.War.S01E04.The.Battle.Of.Britain
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00:00For over a hundred years, battles have raged in the air for command of the skies.
00:09If you don't have air supremacy, you're in trouble.
00:13Since its earliest beginnings in World War I, the airplane is the supreme weapon of the
00:18armed forces.
00:19This was a real battle for civilization, for humanity.
00:24It revolutionized battle and changed the ways war was fought and won.
00:28The F-117 has obviously changed how we design aircraft and air campaigns.
00:34War drove innovation in the skies.
00:36What we hear from the Air Force is, when the F-35 wasn't there, all others died.
00:41When the F-35 was there, they reigned supreme.
00:44Aircraft bred a new kind of hero.
00:46The fate of entire nations depended on the bravery of a handful of men.
00:51An appreciation of the extent to which young men were willing to put their lives on the
00:55line for an ideal is something we need to remember more often than we do.
01:00In this episode, by 1940, Germany had conquered most of Europe.
01:07Hitler's next target was a small island across the English Channel, Britain.
01:13In the summer of that year, Britain prepared for an all-out air attack to defend the country
01:18from Nazi Germany.
01:19I think it's very important to recognize that the Battle of Britain was really designed
01:24to prevent the German invasion of the United Kingdom.
01:27That's what it was about.
01:29Britain's Royal Air Force was in the front line to defend against a German invasion.
01:34The Battle of Britain was the first huge air battle ever fought.
01:39This would be an air battle that would decide the fate of Britain and the course of World
01:44War II.
01:45It was the first time that one nation had tried to defeat another, primarily by defeating
01:50its air force.
01:51The stakes were incredibly high.
01:53I think the feeling of the German Air Force was, there is no enemy in the world we cannot
01:57fight against.
01:59All that stood in the way of Nazi Germany were the fighter pilots of Britain's Royal
02:04Air Force.
02:06In air combat, pilots lived and died by the Golden Rule.
02:10The element of surprise was absolutely vital.
02:14Pilots of the Royal Air Force faced overwhelming odds against the German Luftwaffe, which outnumbered
02:20British planes.
02:21You've got men who can only fly so many times a day, even though they did fly from dawn
02:25to dusk, they were facing exhaustion, they were taking losses.
02:29The fight for freedom was about to begin.
02:32It was one of the great decisive battles of the Second World War.
02:51July 1940.
03:08Britain was about to fight an air war against the German Luftwaffe Air Force.
03:13It would be one of the most decisive battles of World War II.
03:19The German faced the might of the Third Reich alone.
03:24After the evacuation of British troops at Dunkirk in May 1940, and the fall of France
03:29to Nazi Germany, Hitler's continued conquest of Europe and Britain seemed unstoppable.
03:37Britain is in a terrible state in the summer of 1940.
03:41It's fought a battle in Europe against the Germans, it's been very badly beaten, as have
03:45the French.
03:46France is about to fall.
03:47There's been this ignominious Dunkirk episode when the entire British army is evacuated,
03:52leaving all its equipment behind.
03:59Hitler drew up plans to invade Britain, codenamed Operation Sea Lion.
04:05But standing in his way were the pilots of the Royal Air Force.
04:09The other thing, of course, was it was recognised very early on that if they were to have any
04:12chance of success, they would have to defeat Britain in the air, or at least wear down
04:16its air defences.
04:19German Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering was determined to strike immediately, when the
04:23Royal Air Force was at its weakest.
04:27I think we ought to remember that the RAF had been in action throughout the whole Battle
04:30of France.
04:31They'd been fighting very, very hard there.
04:33They then had to defend the British troops as they were being evacuated off the beaches
04:38of Dunkirk.
04:39So they'd been fighting very, very hard, and they'd taken a lot of losses.
04:42We had less fighter pilots than they had.
04:46So their numbering outnumbered us completely.
04:53Germany's Hermann Goering thought he could win the battle for the skies in just four
04:58weeks.
04:59His first targets were British shipping and ports.
05:03Britain imported 100% of its oil, 50% of its food, and 60% of its raw materials.
05:11By targeting shipping convoys, he believed he could quickly bring Britain to its knees.
05:16There's no disguising the fact that two-thirds of these essential goods came from overseas.
05:21And if you couldn't keep the sea lanes open, then you were in real trouble.
05:30Defending shipping convoys near to Britain's shores was the job of Britain's fighter planes.
05:36Taking the charge was the legendary Supermarine Spitfire.
05:46Spitfire was a wonderful machine, but it was also a wonderful symbol.
05:51People came to see it as a symbol of Britishness quite early on.
05:54It was small, but it was very strong, and it was very resolute, very determined, and
05:58deadly when aroused.
05:59So it became a great British symbol, as well as being a fantastic fighting machine.
06:05Armed with eight 7.7 Browning machine guns, the Spitfire could attack at speeds of over
06:11360 miles per hour at high altitude.
06:16Spitfires were to do what was called in military parlance, fly top cover, to protect the Hurricanes
06:22from the escorting fighters.
06:25Flying alongside the Spitfire was the Hawker Hurricane.
06:29The Hurricane was given the role of attacking the bombers.
06:34The Spitfire was used to attack the top cover fighters.
06:38These were the British fighter planes that would take on the German Luftwaffe.
06:44Both types of fighters used a combat air tactic learned from World War I.
06:49The fighter would use the sun to blind the enemy.
06:52Both of them would, if possible, try to get up sun or into the sun, because we all know
06:58if you're trying to look into the sun, you can't see anything at all.
07:01The Germans would say, beware of the Hun in the sun, but the Germans would say, beware
07:05of the Spitfire or the Hurricane in the sun.
07:07It gives them a visual advantage to dive down into the aircraft.
07:18The opening salvos in the Battle of Britain began in July 1940, as the German Luftwaffe
07:24began targeting shipping with small raids on Britain's southern shores.
07:29The first opening phase was with German aircraft in considerable, but not enormous, numbers
07:34coming over the coast, shooting up convoys, doing reconnaissance missions to find out
07:39where the bases were.
07:42Germany needed to know how powerful Britain's defences were.
07:46During this period, to a degree, the Germans are testing Britain's defences by attacking
07:51soft targets and testing how the British respond.
07:56During the 1930s, Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, the Controller of Fighter Command,
08:02created a network of radar stations to protect Britain.
08:06By the time the battle opened, we actually had a pretty good radar system which would
08:10give us plenty of warning of the arrival of big fleets of aircraft, and it allowed that
08:15information to be filtered back to command and control centres that could then decide
08:19how to react to it.
08:22By 1940, a chain of 20 radar stations were built on Britain's coast, ready to give early
08:29warning of enemy planes.
08:31It was, at the time, the most elaborate defensive network in existence.
08:37The advanced technology of radar wasn't the only defence the British had, though.
08:42All along the coast, stationed on small piles of sandbags, binoculars in hand, 30,000 men
08:48and women of the Observer Corps scanned the skies for enemy planes.
09:00The combination of radar and manned observation posts was known as the Dowding system.
09:06What was crucial about it was that it was filtering out information that was being brought
09:10by all of this new information that we were using with radar, with the Observer Corps,
09:16that that information was filtering down into usable information.
09:21The speed at which that happened was incredible.
09:24They had, like, four minutes to be able to turn this information around.
09:29Eyesight was still an essential part of Britain's defences.
09:33They were vital.
09:34Without that information, without men on the ground, without the radar that came through
09:38that was giving them information, without the Observer Corps, which became a loyal Observer
09:42Corps, we wouldn't be where we are today.
09:44They were the eyes and ears of Britain.
09:53Information from British radar stations began identifying German planes off its coast.
10:00Bentley Priory was the home of Fighter Command during the Second World War.
10:06It is just the most important place for the Battle of Britain.
10:10It was the absolute action centre for where everything came in and went out.
10:15Sir Hugh Dowding created the network to marshal his Air Force effectively against the enemy.
10:22You had to be able to hold it together, centrally control it, direct fighters to where the fighting
10:30was actually needed.
10:32And he insisted push that all through in the late 1930s.
10:43On the morning of July 10th, 1940, a fleet of merchant ships prepared to set out to sea,
10:49headed for Dorset on the south coast.
10:53That's when a big convoy called Bread came out into the channel from the Thames Estuary
10:58and was attacked in force by German aircraft.
11:02They themselves were then attacked in turn by the defenders.
11:06It was the target for an armada of German raiders.
11:11Britain's No. 74 Squadron were scrambled to intercept German aircraft.
11:17But the British fighters were in for a surprise.
11:21The German tactics were actually pretty good.
11:23You'd have these big armadas of bombers coming in at 15,000 feet, say.
11:27And then above them, lurking in the sun, these big swarms of Me 109s.
11:32So they were there to come down and dive on the British fighters as they came in to attack
11:36the bombers.
11:37And that worked quite well.
11:43But both the British Spitfire and Hurricane fighters were about to confront the German
11:47Luftwaffe's lethal fighter plane, a plane that had previously conquered both the French
11:53and Polish air forces, the Messerschmitt Me 109.
11:59It was also deadly against the French and the British, which is actually what controlled
12:08the skies over France and ended up with Britain coming into the Battle of Britain on its own,
12:14trying to match the fighters that Germany already had.
12:28What followed next on July 10th was the first dogfight of the Battle of Britain.
12:33German and British planes engaged in a violent game of tag above the Straits of Dover on
12:38Britain's south coast.
12:40For the first time, these guys would have been involved in a mass battle.
12:43They maneuver, they try to get behind each other, or underneath each other, they can
12:47inflict some damage.
12:48They're always looking out behind them for what's going on, they wheel away and so on.
12:52Everywhere you look, there's drama, there are machines flashing in front of you, over
12:56you, under you.
12:57It's incredibly hard to actually work out what's going on, who is friend and who is
13:01foe.
13:02And so it's massive confusion.
13:05British RAF pilots jostled for position in the skies over England.
13:09The Hurricanes really took the brunt of the initial attacks in the Battle of Britain.
13:14Now, the Hurricane aircraft was maneuverable and reasonably fast.
13:18It was the equal of both the Messerschmitt 109 and the Spitfire of the time and was more
13:25maneuverable.
13:26It could pull tighter turns.
13:28Maneuverability for British fighters was a very important aspect, I think, of their
13:33success during this period.
13:35It wasn't quite as good in acceleration as either the Spitfire or its opponent, the ME-109,
13:41but it made up for that in other ways by its maneuverability and by its strength.
13:45It could take a lot of punishment without actually being knocked down.
13:52Spearheading the German aerial attacks on Britain, the Messerschmitt ME-109 set about
13:58decimating British fighter squadrons, setting the stage for a British defeat.
14:17July 1940.
14:19The Battle of Britain had begun.
14:22Britain was alone in its fight to defend against the might of the German Air Force,
14:27the Luftwaffe.
14:29In combat, British pilots fell vulnerable to the Spitfire's weaknesses.
14:35If there was a weakness, it was really the absence of two things.
14:39One is, initially, self-sealing tanks.
14:41The Germans had self-sealing tanks, so that meant if your fuel tank got hit,
14:45then your British plane would immediately erupt into flame in the early days,
14:48which meant you were gone.
14:50The other thing on the strictly mechanical front was the absence,
14:53at the beginning, of fuel injection.
14:55The ME-109 had an advantage which neither the Hurricane nor the Spitfire could match.
15:01The ME-109 had a Daimler-Benz engine, which had fuel injection.
15:06Which meant that the Messerschmitt could outmaneuver a lot of the aircraft it came up against.
15:11One of the techniques that a 109 pilot would use to get away from another aircraft
15:16and put himself into a better position to attack it would be to bunt,
15:21which is to push the nose of the aircraft over, which gets negative G.
15:25The engine would not, of course, lose any power.
15:28It would continue working all the way down.
15:30The Spitfire or the Hurricane that's behind him, if that bunts over like that,
15:34the negative G causes the floats to go up,
15:37and the engine could actually stop working for some time.
15:42Unable to function when the Spitfire was forced into a steep dive,
15:47the engine was starved of fuel and stalled.
15:50The engine that was fuel injected in the 109 just kept going,
15:54so he immediately accelerated away into the dive.
15:58This meant that the Messerschmitt engine could still fire on all cylinders,
16:02even in a loop or a dive.
16:04But the Spitfire, which used gravity to pump fuel, could not.
16:09Losing power, the Spitfire was vulnerable to attack from the Messerschmitt.
16:14That few seconds without power could be the difference between life and death.
16:18The German Messerschmitt ME 109 was a force to be reckoned with.
16:23The ME 109 was more heavily armed,
16:25and it took some time before the Fighting Command recognised
16:28that the machine guns they had were not entirely satisfactory.
16:33But the ME 109 had some fatal drawbacks for its pilots too.
16:38The Messerschmitt 109, due to its very narrow landing gear,
16:43was a very difficult aircraft for take-off and landing,
16:47and as many aircraft and pilots were lost in landing and take-off accidents
16:51as were actually lost in air-to-air combat.
16:55But once mastered, it was a lethal killing machine.
16:59Well, the 109 was a brand new, very fast aircraft
17:02with a very powerful engine, and a very good engine,
17:06which was a little better than the British engines.
17:09What you're trying to do is get behind your opponent
17:12and hit him with your machine gun bullets.
17:14It's a question then of who can get on the tail of the other aircraft.
17:20As well as fighting the enemy,
17:22pilots had to battle against immense G-forces.
17:26In a steep turn or dive, body weight increases up to six times,
17:31with potentially fatal results.
17:33Blacking out was a completely routine event.
17:36So you were dealing with all these things,
17:38and then you have to actually work out how to shoot this very nimble,
17:42moving object and kill it.
17:44Success or failure depends on three things.
17:47It depends on the machine, it depends on your skill as a pilot,
17:51and it depends also on luck.
17:53Each British pilot chose their own way to attack the German enemy.
17:58There were many different ways of attacking upon the fleet.
18:01You could attack it from the sides.
18:03Some people chose to attack it head-on,
18:05which was hair-raising action, as you can imagine,
18:08which required a lot of skill.
18:10Attacking German bombers head-on
18:12was a tactic Britain's 111th Squadron
18:15chose to use when it scrambled to meet the Luftwaffe.
18:19If you see a fighter plane coming straight at you,
18:21it's a very, very unnerving experience,
18:23and your instinct is to turn away, which is what many of these bombers did.
18:27It was one way in which you might be able to inflict fatal damage
18:30on the bomber aircraft.
18:32And they're both moving at extremely high speed,
18:34and you can't see them.
18:37It broke up the formation,
18:38which meant they were less able to defend themselves,
18:40and it meant for them, effectively, the attack was over
18:43and they really were heading for home.
18:49Defending Britain's shores were pilots from all over Europe.
18:53There were about 3,000 pilots from 17 different countries
18:56who were deployed to defend Britain's shores.
18:59It was a very difficult task.
19:02Survival rates for aircrew increased
19:04as more pilots gained combat experience.
19:07Well, the first thing they learnt was that they could do it,
19:10they could actually blunt these attacks,
19:12and they were learning all the time.
19:14Every day they went up, every minute that you spent in combat,
19:17you were learning something new.
19:19It was a very, very difficult task.
19:21It was a very, very difficult task.
19:23It was a very, very difficult task.
19:25It was a very, very difficult task.
19:27It was a very, very difficult task.
19:29Every minute that you spent in combat, you were learning something new.
19:32So when they got back down on the ground,
19:34they'd be animatedly talking about what had happened,
19:36what did you do, what did you see, how did you deal with that?
19:38This had never been done before, so they were making this up as they went along.
19:41So it was really learning on the job,
19:43and they learnt very successfully and very quickly.
19:49The German Luftwaffe was targeting British convoys of merchant ships
19:53to choke off vitally needed supplies.
19:56Defending them were Britain's fighter pilots.
19:59At the same time as the bread convoy from London was under attack,
20:04spitfires of Britain's 610th Squadron were scrambled from Biggin Hill
20:09to engage with another group of Me 109s
20:12roaring over Dover on England's south-east coast,
20:15searching for more targets.
20:18This is the start of this constant tempo of daily battles,
20:23fighters coming out to meet them, attacking the bombers,
20:25taking on the fighter escorts in these dogfights.
20:28So from then on you've got these daily battles that ebb and flow,
20:32the numbers get bigger and bigger and bigger.
20:38The raids continued.
20:4070 German bombers flew in from the west,
20:43taking radar stations by surprise, attacking Swansea in Wales.
20:49The bombers inflicted serious damage to ships as well as the city.
20:56Meanwhile, Fighter Command wrestled with the problem
21:01of multiple simultaneous attacks by the German Air Force.
21:05At the same time as attacking Swansea,
21:08the German Air Force was bombing the bread convoy over Dover
21:12on England's south coast.
21:14The problem for Fighter Command was what do you do?
21:16Do you engage the German Air Force when they're doing this?
21:18Because if they're not attacking you, they're attacking this convoy.
21:22The Irish response to this were fighter patrols over the channel
21:25and responding to relevant German threats as and when they came up.
21:29Dowding scrambled a number of squadrons,
21:32and in realising the strength of the German Air Force,
21:34he then scrambled more fighters, and there was a huge dogfight
21:37which took place across the convoy.
21:39Over 100 planes wheeled above the bread convoy,
21:43engaged in a massive dogfight.
21:45British Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding's pilots
21:49successfully resisted the German attack.
22:01The Dowding system, the early warning system of radar and eyesight,
22:05also proved invaluable to British defence.
22:11One of the many problems the Germans faced in the Battle of Britain
22:14was that they underestimated the British radar chain completely.
22:17So they didn't really realise that once they were being engaged by enemy aircraft,
22:21they were being engaged by an aircraft that had been alerted by radar.
22:33Despite the edge the home chain system gave its squadrons,
22:37Fighter Command struggled for survival
22:39as wave after wave of German fighters attacked British airfields.
22:45Impatient to launch his invasion on Britain,
22:48Hitler ordered a full-scale aerial assault.
23:07The famous air battle in the summer of 1940
23:10for control of Britain's skies had begun.
23:15Hitler had two clear objectives.
23:18The first, to blockade the channel and choke Britain's lifeline of convoys.
23:23The second, to clear the skies of British fighter planes.
23:28The whole of southern Britain is vulnerable.
23:30You can expect to see enemy aircraft,
23:33particularly places which fall into this German plan,
23:36i.e. the ports like Southampton, later on Plymouth.
23:45As German fighters attacked Britain's convoys,
23:48Fighter Command's losses mounted.
23:54In under one month, 120 British planes had been destroyed or damaged,
23:59with nearly 77 pilots killed.
24:02The effectiveness of Fighter Command was in serious doubt.
24:06Throughout the summer of 1940, the RAF suffered.
24:10Throughout the summer of 1940, the RAF suffered persistent losses.
24:15Coastal Command, which had, on the whole,
24:17pretty slow flying and effective aircraft,
24:19also suffered really very heavy losses.
24:22The age band for the Battle of Britain pilots was from about 19 to 23,
24:28and the length of time that they stayed alive was not very long at all.
24:33It was a matter of weeks for the average pilot.
24:36If you got through, say, the first six weeks,
24:39then you had a much greater chance of surviving.
24:42However good they were as pilots,
24:44they didn't have a lot of experience at shooting people down
24:47and going into combat.
24:49So serious was the shortage of British pilots
24:52that training was cut down from six months to just four weeks.
24:57Some arrived on squadrons
24:59with only a handful of hours in spitfires or hurricanes.
25:02They're not familiar with the machine,
25:04and their training is nothing like as thorough as it was
25:07for those who were there at the beginning.
25:17By mid-July 1940,
25:19British fighter squadrons desperately needed more planes.
25:23Lord Beaverbrook, the British newspaper magnate,
25:26was given the task of mobilising greater aircraft production.
25:30So he became the Minister of Aircraft Production,
25:33and as soon as he did, he shouted at people
25:35and he did try to make sure that every effort was being made.
25:41Throughout all of July,
25:43Fighter Command had mounted over 12,000 sorties against German planes.
25:49By that stage, the Germans had decided
25:51that the most effective way of getting at British shipping in China
25:54was to use the dive bomb, but they would need to be escorted,
25:57as other bombs would be, by a large body of fighters.
26:01July 14th.
26:03The German raiders targeted another convoy of merchant ships
26:07heading along England's south coast.
26:1012 Spitfires from the 610th Squadron,
26:13together with 7 Hurricanes from the 151st Squadron,
26:17and 9 from 615th Squadron, were scrambled to meet them.
26:21They successfully fought off the raiders.
26:29Despite the July raids,
26:31the German Luftwaffe was failing to achieve the success Hitler was hoping for,
26:35to invade Britain.
26:38By contrast, German victory had been achieved over landlocked Europe
26:43through lightning airstrikes, the Blitzkrieg.
26:47The same tactics couldn't be used across the English Channel Divide,
26:52and Britain's fighter pilots were proving harder to defeat.
26:56German aircraft had a number of disadvantages in the Battle of Britain.
27:00The most obvious, of course, was that existing fighters
27:03had relatively small fuel capacity,
27:05and so they could engage in combat over southern England
27:08for a little more than 30 minutes, and then they had to make their way back,
27:11otherwise they were going to crash into the Channel, as many of them did.
27:15As July came to a close,
27:17attacks on Dover in the south of England rose in frequency and strength.
27:23British pilots were constantly scrambled to take on the German fighters
27:27in another fight to the death in the air.
27:31Pilots would probably be woken at about 4 o'clock in the morning.
27:34Dressed in their pyjamas, they'd go out to the aeroplanes,
27:37which had been looked after all night sometimes by the ground crew,
27:42so they didn't sleep at all in many cases, repairing the aircraft, getting them ready.
27:47At about 4 o'clock, the pilot would go out, climb into the aeroplane,
27:51start it up, make sure everything was ready, shut it down,
27:54and then he'd go back to his billet until that terrible noise of the bell was going,
27:59and then they'd run for their aeroplanes.
28:02This was an exhausting process, so you could be on standby from dawn,
28:06you could fly your first operation at 5 o'clock in the morning,
28:10and you could still be at it at 9 o'clock at night.
28:12You might have gone up five or six times during that day.
28:16Pilots longed for a grey, overcast day to recover from the relentless battles.
28:21It looks like flying is going to be difficult.
28:23They're rejoicing because it'll give them a brief respite.
28:26The diaries and the letters, such as they are,
28:28talk about this sort of awful weariness that you never escape from,
28:31even if you get a day off, you never actually catch up on your sleep,
28:34you never get back to that point where you were at the beginning of your tour.
28:41Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding ordered his pilots to take 8 hours off in every 24,
28:48and a continuous rest of 24 hours each week.
28:52Dowding understood, I think, that there was a limit to what you could ask pilots to do,
28:56and it's exhausting and draining to do it day after day.
28:59The adrenaline works a bit, but after a while it is a difficult thing to do continuously.
29:12It wasn't only Britain's Fighter Command that was under pressure.
29:16A month after the Battle of Britain began, the German Luftwaffe had lost 500 pilots and crew.
29:25There's a lull in hostilities, but it was the quiet before the storm.
29:30At the beginning of August, the shape of the battle starts to alter.
29:34The emphasis now is on attacking the RAF, attacking its infrastructure, attacking its bases.
29:40The British airfields weren't the only military targets.
29:44The early warning radar system was targeted too.
29:49August 11th, 1940.
29:52Isle of Wight radar station at Ventnor reported a heavy raid assembling over the Cherbourg peninsula.
29:59British Spitfires from 609th Squadron at Wormwell,
30:03and Hurricanes from 145th Squadron from Tangmere were scrambled.
30:08Six others were put on readiness.
30:11The day for an all-out assault to destroy British Fighter Command came on the 13th of August.
30:17Operation Eagle Day.
30:20Eagle Day is meant to be the climax of the Eagle attack,
30:23so this is when the Luftwaffe take on the RAF head-to-head and destroy it.
30:28Goering had been huffing and puffing all the way through August,
30:31finally said, now come on, we want you to destroy the RAF in four days.
30:34I think probably Goering believed it was possible actually.
30:37The RAF could be destroyed in four days.
30:40German Reichsmarschall Goering,
30:42demanding nothing less than the total destruction of Fighter Command.
30:46And with the fall of Fighter Command, so Britain would fall.
30:51We start to see attacks against RAF Fighter Command airfields in the southeast
30:55in an attempt to take out RAF strength and destroy its infrastructure,
30:59so we see attacks against airfields such as Manston and Biggin Hill.
31:03On the 16th, three days later, Tangmere suffered its worst ever day.
31:08It was the most horrendous attack.
31:11It started late morning with probably about 70 aircraft,
31:16a mixture of Stukas, Junkers 87s, and the twin-engine bombers, the Junkers 88s,
31:22setting off from the northern French coast towards Portsmouth.
31:28The German raiders split into separate groups,
31:31each headed for Southampton, Portsmouth and Tangmere.
31:35And two formations of Hurricane had been launched from Tangmere.
31:40Spitfires, remember, are heading for high level to attack the fighters,
31:45and the two Hurricane formations are now both heading to try and get up some
31:50to attack these guys as they attack Tangmere.
31:53And this is the main cut and thrust of the period,
31:56with the RAF seeking to respond to those threats, scrambling fighters.
32:00The old idea of what nowadays we would call quick reaction alert,
32:03but scrambling fighters.
32:05Five of the Stukas were shot down into the Solent itself.
32:10During the course of about a 10-hour period or so,
32:13launched somewhere in the region of 1,500 sorties against targets in England.
32:17Tangmere was really very, very heavily damaged.
32:27The Battle of Britain stretched pilots of the Royal Air Force to their very limits.
32:32You're dealing with finite resources.
32:34You've got men who can only fly so many times a day.
32:37Even though they did fly from dawn to dusk, they were facing exhaustion.
32:40They were taking losses, etc.
32:42Courage is a finite commodity, and I think it's part of their achievement
32:46that they were able to keep those reserves of resolve, if you like,
32:50going right until the battle was won.
32:53The German Luftwaffe continued its relentless attacks.
32:57The airfields of southeast England were facing total destruction.
33:13August 1940. In the early years of World War II,
33:17the Battle of Britain raged over Britain's skies
33:20as British fighter pilots fought the German Luftwaffe for air superiority.
33:27German fighters continued their relentless onslaught
33:30on Britain's airfields in southern England.
33:33Their objective? To destroy Britain's air force,
33:36to pave the way for the German invasion of Britain.
33:40So in this period, the middle of August,
33:42you start seeing really big formations of German bombers,
33:45300 bombers in one formation.
33:49At midday on August the 18th,
33:51radar reported the largest build-up yet of German aircraft.
33:55Britain's Fighter Group 11 was brought to readiness.
33:59Squadron 501 was already in the air,
34:02patrolling Canterbury and Margate on England's south coast
34:06to protect its airfields.
34:09A further four British squadrons were ordered up
34:12to guard Biggin Hill and the British airfields.
34:15The British squadrons were ordered up to guard Biggin Hill and Kenley.
34:20Meanwhile, the German bombers were approaching their target.
34:24First on the list was Kenley Airfield, just 15 miles from London.
34:29A group of German bombers crossed the English Channel at 100 feet,
34:34avoiding radar detection.
34:37Taking advantage of ideal flying conditions,
34:40German bombers found their target at Kenley Airfield,
34:44destroying all ten hangars and six hurricanes,
34:48killing 12 and injuring 20.
34:51For the RAF, the really important day was August the 18th,
34:54because that was the first day of good, clear weather.
34:57The Luftwaffe did finally manage to attack
34:59a number of important fighter command air stations very seriously.
35:02Right bang in the middle of August, you have three days of intense fighting
35:06when some of the fighter stations get very badly beaten up.
35:09During the raids on August the 18th,
35:12the Luftwaffe lost twice as many planes as British fighter command.
35:16But the raids continued relentlessly, every day.
35:20On August the 18th, the German Air Force did engage in a number of very heavy raids
35:25on fighter command stations across Sussex and Kent,
35:29inflicting quite heavy damage,
35:31particularly on Biggin Hill and on a number of other stations.
35:34The attack on Biggin Hill airfield wasn't the only one of its kind.
35:39During August 1940,
35:41German raids increased pressure on Britain's fighter command.
35:45For the RAF, it was clear that something had changed.
35:48It was clear now that the hit-and-run raids,
35:50the raids on the Channel and so on, had all been a preliminary.
35:53They saw the period from August the 18th, really,
35:56as the period when they were up against it.
36:05But it didn't stop there.
36:07On the 30th August, hundreds of German bombers and fighters
36:11came across the Channel over Kent, in the south-east of England,
36:15towards the airfields protecting London.
36:19British Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding's other concern
36:22was that his Group Sector 11 stations,
36:25including Debden, Kenley and Biggin Hill,
36:28were coming under heavy attack.
36:31The first week of September, for both sides, was a gruelling time.
36:35Both sides were exhausted.
36:37The pilots on both sides showed significant anxiety,
36:40symptoms and so on.
36:42The tension of doing this over and over and over again was difficult.
36:46Both sides were getting exhausted.
36:48One last final effort was made to get a fighter command
36:51because breathing down Göring's neck was Hitler saying,
36:54you know, am I going to invade? I'm not going to invade.
36:57We've got two weeks left. What are we going to do?
36:59And Göring's saying, I don't know what we're going to do.
37:01It'll be all over in two days.
37:03The first week of September, very heavy losses on both sides.
37:07Six of the seven British Group Sector 11 airfields
37:10were bombed to the point of collapse.
37:13Five of its advanced airfields were seriously damaged.
37:17The German air raids inflicted heavy losses on both sides.
37:27After months of unrelenting, furious aerial combat,
37:31Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding was facing the inevitable,
37:35the defeat of British fighter command at the hands of the German Luftwaffe.
37:40Towards the end of August 1940, early September,
37:43they were actually causing attrition to the RAF.
37:47But just as it seemed the final blows were about to fall,
37:51the German Luftwaffe changed tactics.
37:57On 7th September 1940,
37:59the Luftwaffe shifts its focus of attacks
38:01from RAF fighter command airfields
38:03to industrial targets and civilian targets.
38:06The German air raids that bombed British cities
38:09famously became known as the Blitz,
38:12but it had a silver lining for Britain's fighter command.
38:15This is important for the RAF, in particular fighter commanders.
38:18It gives them a degree of breathing space
38:20to have to recover from losses suffered
38:22during the third period of the battle
38:24and eventually come back in force.
38:26The change in strategy from bombing British airfields
38:29to bombing Britain's cities
38:31allowed fighter command to regroup and rebuild.
38:35It was Reichsmarschall Göring's fatal error.
38:38It begins in the afternoon with a huge raid on London.
38:42It's the first time London has really been hit hard.
38:45There have been bombs scattered around London, but nothing like this.
38:48It's a terrible new development, but at the same time it's a salvation
38:52because the Luftwaffe has switched away from attacking RAF targets
38:56and it's now hit a big target which it can't possibly hope to destroy.
39:01This was a terrible mistake by the Germans, a terrible mistake by Hitler.
39:07On September 15,
39:09Germany's Luftwaffe assembled for a major raid on London.
39:13They were met by 15 British hurricane squadrons
39:17and 8 Spitfire squadrons.
39:19On this day, the Germans launched an all-out attack against Britain
39:22thinking that they had shattered RAF fighter command
39:25and that they could operate freely over Britain.
39:28Much to their surprise, RAF fighter command was reinforced
39:31and in aerial battles over London,
39:33the Luftwaffe suffered heavy defeat to the British.
39:36RAF fighter command strength continues to grow,
39:39partly as a result of some of the pressure relieved
39:41when the Germans changed their attacks to cities.
39:44London was hit by day or by night for the next 56 out of 57 days.
39:52In the afternoon, 400 German fighters escorted 150 bombers
39:57staggered in three waves.
40:00Britain's RAF scrambled 8 squadrons to patrol over Sheerness,
40:05Chelmsford, Kenley and Hornchurch in Essex.
40:09Four more British squadrons were ordered up
40:12and then another 8.
40:14A total of 250 British fighters were in the air.
40:18For the first time, the German fighters were outnumbered.
40:23From the west, a force of 80 German bombers
40:26headed across Surrey towards London.
40:29They were met by hurricanes from 217 Squadron
40:33and 607 Squadron from Tangmir.
40:36They tore into them.
40:39During the Blitz period, the German strategy essentially sought
40:42to coerce the British government into surrender.
40:45The British public were surprisingly resilient to German attacks
40:48and morale remained relatively high, the so-called Blitz spirit.
40:52This time, Britain's fighter command overwhelmed the airborne German raiders.
40:57And they inflicted very heavy damage.
40:5925% of the bomber force destroyed or heavily damaged.
41:03No air force could withstand that rate of attrition for more than a few days.
41:07As Britain's fighter command rebuilt,
41:09the whole defense process of detection, interception and destruction worked.
41:15There's no doubt that the September battle showed
41:17that fighter command had finished its apprenticeship.
41:19It was now fully trained.
41:21Now experienced and replenished,
41:24the full force of Britain's fighter pilots ranged
41:27against the failing German Luftwaffe to finish the battle.
41:31The official end of the Battle of Britain was October 31, 1940.
41:35The invasion plan had not worked.
41:37The battle officially ended on the 31st of October
41:40and the plan to invade Britain is on hold
41:43and there's no prospect of it being resuscitated any time soon.
41:47In fact, Hitler is planning to invade Russia,
41:49so the invasion threat of Britain, such as it was, is over.
41:54The Battle of Britain saw the destruction of 1,733 of Germany's Luftwaffe planes.
42:00British fighter command lost 915 aircraft.
42:05Of the 2,917 pilots under Britain's fighter command
42:10who took part in the air battles of 1940,
42:13544 had died.
42:17Britain's prime minister, John F. Kennedy,
42:20had died.
42:22Britain's prime minister, Winston Churchill,
42:25famously made a speech in the House of Commons,
42:28broadcast on radio, honouring the few,
42:31the pilots of fighter command.
42:36Never in the field of human conflict
42:39was so much owed by so many to so few.
42:42It was one of the great decisive battles of the Second World War.
42:47I think nothing in the Second World War
42:49has been more important for the British
42:51than the air defence put up by the RAF in 1940.
42:55The Battle of Britain became a symbol
42:57of British defiance against Hitler,
42:59British defiance against the Axis,
43:01British defiance against all those forces of darkness
43:04that were going to overwhelm the world.
43:07Operation Sea Lion, Hitler's plan to invade Britain,
43:11was postponed indefinitely.
43:14The Battle of Britain had been won.
43:44.