MICHAEL  In July 1940 Air Commodore Peter Brothers was a Wing Commander with his squadron of Hurricanes operating out of RAF Biggin Hill.  In his late 80s now, and with a painting of his trusted aircraft, registration GZL hanging above his armchair, he takes us back to the skies of 65 years ago…

BROTHERS One didn’t think about what was going to happen afterwards, the, the job was to win that battle and make sure there was no invasion. That would have been a tremendous change in history, because there would have been no base for the Americans to come and help us, which they eventually did.

CHURCHILL I look forward confidently to the exploits of our fighter pilots, these splendid men, this brilliant youth, who will have the glory of saving their native land, their island home and all they love from the most deadly of all attacks.

MICHAEL  But did the contrails across the skies of Kent in the summer of 1940 really spell out that air power had saved Britain from Nazi invasion – or does the propaganda of Britain’s finest hour still hang in the atmosphere obscuring a balanced assessment of how Britain was saved during those fateful months?

Andrew Lambert, Professor of War Studies at King’s College London thinks there are particular reasons why we remember the battle in the air to the exclusion of other things.

LAMBERT When the battle was over the British needed to make a statement about who they were and what their position in the world was, and for that the ultimate icon was going to be the Spitfire, it was going to be the Battle of Britain, because that sold, that was a marketable thing, here was modernity, the ultimate symbol of modern power, the fighter aeroplane, and you could sell this myth all the way round the world, because a large part of it is a mythology. Not that is untrue, just that the way it’s presented is designed to catch a particular market. This is public relations, this is propaganda, because Churchill knows it’s only if the Americans are prepared to back us that we can survive, and only if they join the War can we hope to win it.

CHURCHILL But if we fail then the whole world including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for will sink into the abyss of a new dark age.

MICHAEL I have been lucky to witness some historic events and I’ve now lived long enough to see how the passage of time alters their proportions.  I believe that the full story of how Britain was saved in 1940 is more complicated.  After all, what would have happened if we had lost the Battle for Britain in the air?  Would a Nazi invasion have been inevitable?

LAMBERT The Battle of Britain has a, a mythic quality as, as preserving the country from invasion, and it was those few pilots in their planes that stopped the Germans crossing the English Channel. The only reason the Germans didn’t cross the Channel in nineteen forty is because they couldn’t cross the Channel without being wiped out by the Royal Navy.

CHURCHILL Now here is where we come to the Navy, and after all we have a Navy. Some people are inclined to forget that we have a Navy...

CORRELLI The Royal Navy was vastly larger than the German Navy. By summer 1940 partly because of the Norway campaign the German Navy was reduced to just a few cruisers and destroyers, so the German Navy could not possibly on its own have covered an invasion in the face of the Royal Navy in any kind of strength.

MICHAEL Andrew Lambert and naval historian Correlli Barnet both see the defence of Britain in 1940 as a naval, not a fighter command issue.

LAMBERT The RAF had demonstrated very little capability to damage even the stationary invasion craft that the Germans were assembling in the Channel ports. The RAF bombed them, but damage was minimal. The problem was that the Germans were going to come across the Channel under heavy air escorts, and the attempts by the RAF to interdict  that would have been relatively unsuccessful. The German Admiral in command of all of this, Eric Raeder, said it’s simply impossible while the Royal Navy exists.

MICHAEL Hindsight is a fine thing, but how did it look at the time?  Were the RAF really our front line against invasion? 

FX DOG Barks

BAILEY Shut up. Sonnet, come here.

MICHAEL At home with his black Labrador, Sonnet, Capt Val Bailey - a Sub Lieutenant on HMS Active in the Summer of 1940 - still thinks that one of the things we’ve forgotten to remember about the early years of the war is the Navy’s role in any forthcoming invasion.

BAILEY Had we not won the Battle of Britain then life would have been extremely unpleasant, but there wouldn’t have been an invasion. And people like to think that a bunch of barges that assembled in Calais were going to motor across the Channel and invade England, this is rubbish. The waking terror of every landing is a cruiser in amongst ships trying to land troops. This is slaughter. We would not have actually had the German jackboots  running up and down Piccadilly for quite a long time until you’d got rid of the Navy, which was you know part of the system, keep the fleet in being.

MICHAEL Naval strength gave Britain the chance to destroy an invading force, to protect the convoys bringing us food and machinery, and to harass the enemy at long range.  Whilst we had the Navy, we had a chance.  But what if Britain’s naval superiority were threatened? 

CHURCHILL What General Weygand has called the Battle of France is over, the Battle of Britain is about to begin.

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