Battle of Britain day.

Today is Battle of Britain day.

If it wasn’t for the Spitfires everyone in Britain would be speaking German!

Maybe the Englanders would even be good at penalty shoot outs

Well maybe not.

The common sense narrative of the Battle of Britain is a testament to the power of myth in human communities.

Everyone knows that in the summer of 1940 the island of Britain was perilously close to invasion by the forces of the Third Reich. Moreover only a doughty few Spitfire pilots called Julian and Guy saved the sceptred isle from the fiendish Hun.

Churchill’s speech at the dispatch box to “the few” created the myth of the Battle of Britain for all time.

The reality, as ever, is often at variance with the comforting fable.

So let’s look at the components parts of the myth.

Like most successful myths it has at least one sturdy meme.

The battle of Britain myth has three.

The Importance of the conflict to Britain, the centrality of the Spitfire and the composition of “the few”.

In 1940 Britain was about to be invaded by the Germans.

Really?

With what?

Britain is, to state the crushingly obvious, an island.

Any invasion would therefore have to be a rather massive amphibious operation.

Just think of the D-Day flotilla.

The Kriegsmarine had no more than twenty destroyers to call on.

The Graf Spee was scuttled off Montevideo in 1939 and as the Battle of Britain reached its height the Bismarck was still undergoing sea trials.

This was the naval force that was going to take on the biggest and best navy in the world?

In its  own backyard?

Really?

The famous “Channel Dash” (Operation Cerberus) in February 1942 showed that definitely Britannia ruled the waves around Britain.

The operation was a success, but the Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen were damn lucky to survive.

The main plank of Operation Sea lion was to take Rhine barges many of them unpowered and tow them across a seriously rough seaway that the Kreigsmarine did not control.

This should have been  called “operation drown lots of German soldiers in the channel”!

Even with total air superiority over Crete the Germans couldn’t mount an amphibious operation leaving Kurt Student’s Fallscrimjaeger to their heroic pyric victory.

The German equivalent of the Mulberry harbour wasn’t tested in the North Sea until the winter of 1941/42.

The specialised landing craft vital for the operation the Marinefährprahm wasn’t commissioned until April 1941.

Yet history tells us that Britain was in imminent danger of invasion from the Germans.

Yet the Germans had next to no navy compared to Britain and no specialised amphibious landing craft.

Even if it had been the sole war aim of the Third Reich then it was very touch and go if Hitler could have invaded Britain.

As we know Hitler’s real objectives lay in the east because of his fanatical hatred of the Slavs and the dream of Lebensraum for a greater Germany.

Then there’s the myth within the myth of the Spitfire.

Everyone knows that it was the Spitfire wot won it!

Wrong.

It was the Hurricane that was decisive plane for various boring reasons.

The turn-around time (re-arm, refuel etc.) for the Spitfire was 26 minutes. That of the Hurricane, only 9 minutes from down to up again. During the Battle of Britain the time spent on the ground was crucial.

The Spitfire was an all metal fighter, slightly faster, had a faster rate of climb and had a higher ceiling, while the Hurricane had a fabric covered fuselage, was quicker to repair and withstood more punishment.

The majority of German planes shot down during the four month period were destroyed by Hurricanes. For much of the Battle of Britain, the Spitfires went after the German BF 109s at the higher altitudes, while the Hurricanes attacked the bomber formations flying at lower altitudes. This cost the enemy a total of 551 pilots killed or taken prisoner.

In the attrition war in the air over southern England it was the Hurricane that wore down the Luftwaffe.

Despite these unarguable facts it is the looks of the Spitfire that caught the imagination and the creation of a myth is always a work of the human imagination.

Always.

None of this, of course, takes away from the bravery and resilience of the air crews and of course we should remember the many nationalities that took to the skies in their RAF planes.

The third meme within the Battle of Britain myth is that the chaps taking to the air were cricket playing Englishmen.

Until recently the contribution of the all Polish 303 Squadron had not been properly acknowledged.

Given that Britain declared war on Germany to protect Poland is just one of the many ironies around this very misunderstood “battle”.

No. 303 (“Kościuszko”) Polish Fighter Squadron was the highest scoring unit of those equipped with Hurricanes and not a Julian or a Gideon among them!

The reality, rather than the representation tells us that this was, in the end, a very limited air campaign of little significance to the war where the unloved Hurricane not the sexy Spitfire was the decisive weapon. Moreover it was much more dangerous for Fritz to encounter a Stanislaw in his Hurricane than a Julian in his Spitfire.

However those facts shouldn’t get in the way of the myth.

Myths endure and are passed on because they contain strong memes that make people feel good about themselves and about their tribe.

That’s why we humans invented myths long before we could write them down.