US Marine reacts to the Battle of Britain

As an American, the Battle of Britain is hard to fathom, but the courage and determination is easily identifiable

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👋 Background info on myself: I am a prior Marine infantryman currently serving in the Army. I've been through specialized Close Quarter Battle training, security guard training, subterranean warfare course, urban surveillance training, foreign weapons training, helicopter insert/extract master, as well as numerous training with other militaries and their equipment.

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#battleofbritain #armchairhistorian #ww2

[CombatArmsChannel]

The weird audio glitch at 4:40 is due to a copyright claim lol. They're really out here claiming history now 😅

[paulcowie]

I'd recommend "13 hours that saved Britain". An excellent documentary that gives a real feel for how precarious the situation became.

[simongeering]

The documentary "13 hours that saved Britain" is one of the best in depth accounts of the actual events of that faithful day if you are looking for an explanation of the battle itself rather than the background presented in this reaction.

[davemac]

I would recommend the feature film Battle Of Britain (1969), starring Laurence Olivier (as Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding) and Michael Caine, and directed by Guy Hamilton, who directed some of the early James Bond films. The Spanish air force supplied the German planes so the visual effects (pre-CGI era) all look very authentic. It's probably one of the best WW2 films made and it's about one of the most important battles. Fun fact: Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk (2017) has Michael Caine reprising his role over the radio communications as he plays Tom Hardy's Spitfire Squadron commander in the later film.

[mariafletcher]

For the men and women who lost their lives in WW1 & WW2. may there souls rest in peace We will remember them. 🕊️ From UK 🇬🇧

[adz]

What's cool is, where I live in Derby, East Midlands still some of the old factory roofs are painted in camo patterns so the pilots couldn't identify the buildings.
Rolls Royce was in Derby and plenty of other places so they were the big targets.

[generaladvance]

Hugh Dowding, what an absolute legend.

[reggriffiths]

What many people don't realise is that the Blitz and Battle of Britain was not just about London, which is all that's ever shown; Every major city in the UK received its share of Bombing - all the major industrial cities like Birmingham and Coventry, and shipyards like Glasgow and Belfast. Belfast was the biggest shipyard in the world, and unbeknown to the Germans when they Blitzed it, the aircraft carrier Ark Royal was there having major repairs done, and they missed it, although much damage was done to the docks and various other parts of the city. As a matter of interest, Harland and Wolff were also building tanks by the hundreds, and the "yard" had it maximum number of workers ever recorded - 35, 000 at its peak. However, in that single raid by the Luftwaffe, some 1, 000 Belfast citizens were killed.

[jasondrummond]

One of the aircraft that came out of 'necessity' was the de Havilland Mosquito - a wooden aircraft that didn't require scarce aluminium. Parts for it were produced by cabinet makers and piano makers and other traditional wood-working crafts in small shops scattered all over Britain. Locally sourced materials and distributed production produced the "Wooden Wonder' - one of the most famous and effective aircraft of WWII.

[peteryarnold]

My Grandfather was in the Royal Engineers Bomb Disposal during the blitz. They were given a spade, a pickaxe, a doctors stethoscope to listen to the timing mechanisms inside the unexploded bomb, and told to go and get em. The life expectency of a new recruit averaged 2 weeks. I have some amazing photos of him down big holes sat on top of german bombs.

[FoxDren]

"Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few" - Churchill

and Thank you to the airmen of Poland, New Zealand, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Australia, Belgium, South Africa, France, Ireland, America & South Rhodesia for your help in protecting the skies of Britain. We are forever in your debt and we will remember you.

[leehorsfall]

Dowding was born in Moffat in Scotland. He is remembered every year by the raf and there is an annual fly over.

[jimharrison]

It was a luckily different generation back then, we owe so much not only to them but the pilots of other nations who'd fled Europe and joined us along with the commonwealth. Our numbers were low and we were battle weary and fighting what was a powerful and well trained elite force who'd already taught us a lesson in France, but they and the population never faded. It is one of the truly proudest episodes in our history when we came off the ropes and truly showed what we were made of.

[pumbar]

Worth having a look at Sir Keith Park, the legendary Kiwi commander of 11 group in the Battle of Britain.

[milgeekmedia]

Both my parents were in the British army during WW2, though ironically while my father served in the 8th Army (Desert Rats) in North Africa he served in HQ logistics WHILE my mother Served in the ATS in England but was deployed on anti-aircraft gun sites in London during The Battle of Britain & The Blitz. So, in actuality, you might say that my mother saw more direct front line service that my dad did! (She worked as a 'predictor' calculating the aiming for the AA guns and then she moved onto radar.)

[eventingcrazy]

Next time you are in London, you should visit the cabinet war rooms. This was the control complex that the war was primarily directed from. It is now a tourist attraction.

[lillibitjohnson]

A lot of Australian pilots went to England to fly for Britain. My kids great grandfather was one of them. He did many bombing missions over Europe. He wasn’t a pilot, He was a school teacher but he was a part of the crew

[davemac]

My mother was a schoolgirl in North London while all this was going on and survived several assassination attempts by Hitler's air force while her dad was on destroyers in the Royal Navy. They lost their first house in one of the bombings, but fortunately one of their neighbours had invested in an Anderson shelter, which was basically a corrugated iron shed half buried in the back garden and the excavated earth is piled on top of the roof, so there were three or four familes in there sheltering during the bombing. The funny thing was that the only part of the house left standing was the cupboard under the stairs, which is the part of the house you were advised to shelter in if you didn't have an Anderson or similar shelter outside, but I wouldn't like to have been in there when the house got hit!

[archiebald]

Twelve US citizens volunteered to fly for the RAF during this battle. They pretended they were Canadian, because at that time, the USA had a law making it illegal for US citizens to join the UK forces. They risked prison time and loss of their citizenship.

[PeterWaddington-ip]

Talking about bullet holes in buildings, I remember when I was about eleven years old the family went on holiday to Italy, and on the drive down there we stopped briefly in Cologne, Germany. During a short guided tour of the City the guide pointed to the Cathedral and mentioned some visible bullet holes in the stonework. At this point my dad chirped up with "Oh, we might have done that when we passed through in 1945. We did quite a bit of damage". Said with a note of pride and a huge smile on his face. The expression on the guide's face was a picture!