Spirit of the "few"

Flight Journal, Oct 2001 by Dibbs, John

GALLERY

Turning the tide of war is not easy; neither is changing the course of history. In the first major battle of nations to be decided solely in the air, however, these feats were achieved by a small group of pilots from a handful of nations during the long hot summer of 1940. Winston Churchill called it the "Battle of Britain"; Hitler's Nazi regime's attempt to add the British Isles to its list of conquests. Churchill also made a speech in which he referred to "so much owed by so many to so few" and created a legend in the process. He referred, of course, to the force of approximately 1, 100 Royal Air Force pilots (mostly British, but including Czechs, Poles, "Aussies," "Kiwis," Canadians and Americans) who, with the help of primitive ground-based radar and hardy ground personnel, defeated the mighty Luftwaffe. Its tools were the early models of the Vickers Supermarine Spitfire and the stolid Sydney Camm-designed Hawker Hurricane--both equipped with variable-pitch propellers.

At a casualty rate of 50 percent, the "few" held the Luftwaffe's bombers and fighters at bay for four months and ensured that Operation Sea Lion--Hitler's planned U.K. Invasion--was "postponed" forever. Tactically, the Germans made critical errors, and the cunning British air staff played a keen and careful hand. The RAF pilots went on to carry the War to the Continent, and the Spitfire was upgraded to compete on every level through to V-E Day. The Hurricane, always the underdog and saddled with a typically thick Hawker airfoil, became an effective ground-support aircraft, and when its armament was converted to four 20-- millimeter cannon, it wreaked havoc on German ground forces to the end of the War. --John Dibbs