By the summer of 1940 things were not looking good
for Britain. "the jaws of the Nazi whale were set to swallow Jonah".
The French had surrendered to Germany's blitzkrieg and the British forces
evacuated from Dunkirk have left almost all of their heavy
equipment behind in France. It was an unenviable situation. After a
failed attempt to make peace, Hitler ordered his commanders to make
Britain the next target with a preliminary date set for invasion
later in the year with the code name Operation Sea Lion. "Six weeks of final
preparation went into those plans, six weeks to determine the history of a
thousand years". There were some problems however, in
order to carry out a successful invasion of the British isles
Germany first needed control of the skies
and thus the stage was set for the Battle of Britain.
Should the royal air force be destroyed then Britain would be open to invasion,
should it survive then Britain was safe. the stakes
couldn't have been higher. The RAF was fresh off the Battle of France and it
had incurred severe casualties both in its bomb and its fighter aircraft.
It had a lack of pilots and a lack of aircraft over there and by the end of it
things were significantly worse. The RAF often goes up and doesn't see
anything to shoot at and if you have nothing to shoot at
you can't shoot it down. The key then for Britain in the upcoming battle
was to maximize her resources. With far fewer pilots to spare,
RAF Fighter Command had to drastically improve its interception rate,
ensuring that every fighter that went into battle actually
met the enemy. Luckily the head of the RAF
Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding had been preparing for this problem
for a number of years. Yeah Hugh Dowding has
basically taken what was the system for defending the country
during the First World War which is relatively primitive, he's also come into
contact with the people developing radar and if you will a light bulb's going off
in Dowding's head and he realizes this is the crucial aspect of what he hopes to
build. In 1940 radar was still a relatively new
invention, but it formed the first key part in
britain's air defences. It worked by firing off radio waves into
the air and then using the waves which bounced
back off of aircraft to calculate their position, direction
and speed. Britain's radar system, known as Chain
Home, consisted of a system of tall lattice
work towers situated along the southwest and east
coasts of England. They could give warning of raids as soon
as the Luftwaffe took off from Calais which gave the RAF a huge advantage. But
that was just the first step in what would become known
as the Dowding System. One of the things Dowding inherits
from the defence of Great Britain is the Observer Corps.
At this point radar cannot look inwards. We always think of radar as this spinning
thing that can see 360 degrees, now that's going to be about
1942 or late 41 before you see that happen.
So once the enemy have crossed the coastline it's up to the eyes and ears
of the Observer Corps. These volunteers who sit in observer
posts, maybe a couple of men, and it's their job using binoculars,
radios, sextants, these type of instruments, to record
the height, the number, and the direction of the aircraft. This information will be
sent back to their filter rooms. "They're hurricanes, three hurricanes on
their tail".
"All yours partner".
The key word in all of this was 'filter' the Filter Room at Bentley Priory took
in all these different streams of information, which you can see on the
desk in these tokens which indicate different reports on the
height, number, direction, speed, and type of aircraft. This
information was then filtered down into something
more usable. "The assessment acts as a sieve,
the result of the sieving being shown in the form of a
'track' which gives only the basic and essential detail". And that key
information was then updated every few minutes and
sent along the line to the Sector Stations
and the people that needed it most. "Everyone in fact,
who must know of the movements of aircraft beyond our coast,
receives information which the filter room is able to supply".
It's a combination of these two streams of information that end up
ultimately on the sector tables of places like RAF Duxford.
It's very information in and then out to the right people,
and it ultimately ends up with the squadrons in the air.
"Tally ho! There they are, Jerries!"
The impact of the Dowding System was doubled by Germany's failure
to see its importance. They rarely targeted these radar stations
that made Dowding so successful. Luftwaffe intelligence
is remarkably poor. It's always 'well we reckon their down to their last 50
Spitfires'. The beleaguered then they rather tired German fighter and
bomber pilots start to have this sort of macabre in-joke
every time they appear it's 'oh here come the last
50 spitfires again' as they appear raid after raid after
raid. The Battle of Britain reached its climax on the 15th of
September 1940, on what is now called Battle of Britain day. In Germany's
largest attack yet over 1500 aircraft battled in the skies
over London, with the RAF repealing the assault and
inflicting heavy losses on the Luftwaffe. Wwo days later, with invasion now
seemingly impossible, Hitler postponed Operation Sea Lion
until further notice. The RAF had survived. Dowding
is the architect of victory in the Battle of Britain, this system
ensures that the Luftwaffe cannot win. It was always going to be a difficult
battle to win for the Luftwaffe, they're fighting over enemy soil,
the fighters generally are usually at the end of their fuel line, and they're
also shackled to their own bombers protecting them.
But the system takes away the German element a surprise. the RAF tends to know
where they are at all times, they know exactly how many
aircraft to set up. The system ensures the Luftwaffe
cannot win the Battle of Britain. The Luftwaffe continued to pile pressure on
Britain in the hope of forcing a surrender, but
from now on this mainly took the form of night raids on british cities marking
the beginning of the blitz. Victory in the Battle of
Britain did not win the war for the allies,
but it did make winning a possibility. Four years later
the allies would launch their invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe
from British shores, an action which would prove
decisive in bringing the war against germany to an end.
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just like this. It's 80 years since the Battle of
Britain took place so there's no better time
to visit IWM Duxford, an airfield that was on the front line of the battle
there's a ticket link in the description.