BATTLE OF BRITAIN 1940

the German conquest of France and the low Countries had been
accomplished with astonishing speed. During the opening months of
World War II in Europe, Nazi Germany had emerged victorious across
the Continent. As German troops paraded down the Champs Hitler and his generals planned for the invasion of Great Britain.

German officers and soldiers had gazed from the French coastline across if the English Channel which separated them from their  enemy. to a man they knew that the conquest of Great Britain would be their greatest challenge to date. However, they were brimming with confidence. Operation as the invasion was code named, would involve the marshaling of troops and materiel, as well as the rounding up of enough barges suitable for transporting the most formidable fighting machine in the world across the narrow expanse of the Channel. Still all of the victories thus far, all of the planning and all of the bold rhetoric meant far less without mastery of the skies. Control of the air was a prerequisite to any successful invasion.

During the ensuing four weeks, dogfights raged daily , a number of merchant ships were sunk by the marauding Germans and the Royal Navy relocated most of its ships and personnel to Portsmouth from Dover. The luftwaffe however, to sufficiently erode the steangth of the royal Air Force. Early in the battle the  British came fully to appreciate the value of accurate intelligence and a new early warning device called radar, both of which provided advance notice to them of incoming German air raids. it was also quickly determined that the lumbering stukas were unfit for air to air combat, easy. prey for RAF fighters. although they had fallen, the Germans considered their initial operations sufficiently effective to begin round two of the aerial preparation for invasion.

                                                                        

                                                                         
          Hitler frustration with failure to destroy the RAF was tempered by his preoccupation with preparation for Operation. the invasion of the Soviet Union, which was scheduled. some historians argue they had been reluctant to continue fighting the British, hoping that the fellow Angelo Saxons might join in the war against the Soviet communists. at any rate as early as the autumn of Hitler had concluded that the battle of Britain could not be won. The opportunity for victory had been squandered and losses continued to mount. British cities burned, but he RAF remained a potent force. Never in the field of human conflict, he declared, has so much been owed by so many to so few.