The Battle of Britain Explained in 60 Seconds | BFBS

With mainland Europe conquered, Hitler turned his attention to invading Britain. 
To do so he knew that his Luftwaffe needed air superiority. The Royal Air Force would need to be destroyed.

In the Houses of Parliament, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill declared:  
 “The Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin.… Let us, therefore, brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.' "

The Nazis might have underestimated the British resolve, the capabilities of the Spitfire and Hurricane fighters and the advantage the RAF would have fighting over home ground.  “Never was so much owed by so many to so few”.

[truths]

Thanks!! This helps with my history test I have tomorrow. My teacher decided that the battles were "too boring to teach" but still put them on the test.

[aperson]

I would prefer in 3 or 4 mins rather than 60 seconds

[ieatoutoften]

Greetings from the 13 colonies. Starting at the 1:56 mark, I loved the rather accurate voice imitation of Prime Minister Winston Churchill on 19 August 1940.

[CliveWebbAustralia]

It's surprises me how much wrong information can be given in 60 seconds. I would suggest that anyone wanting to know about this subject, look at different video...

[MadMatt]

I'm not sure if the Hurricane and Spitfire 'outmatched' the BF109 as you say... A dogfight with a spit was an equal fight but the Hurricanes were more suited to attacking the bombers.

[asensibleyoungman]

If this had taken place 100 years earlier it was have been fought between guys in balloons throwing stones at one another.

[walterkronkitesleftshoe]

Abridged to the point of near uselessness.

[teddyjunior]

The Hurricane was decent but did not outmatch the 109 lol, the 109 was better.

Spitfire vs 109 though, tough to judge. The spitfire had superior turn, the 109 had superior climb and dive. The spitfire had more machine guns. The 109 had less machine guns but had cannon (more powerful that machine guns), so a close match.

So it depends on tactics, a RAF pilot would want to engage in a turning fight where the spitfire would have the advantage. The Luftwaffe pilot would want to engage using the 109's better climb and dive to outmaneuver his opponent that way. Perhaps it would come down to the pilot's preference, experience, etc.

[mrleglove]

"Spitfire's and Hurricanes outmatched the Me 109" ???

Tell that to GruppenKommandeur of JG 26, Major Adolf Galland.

You can't do a 60 second review of the Battle of Britain.

[ooxprfk]

The raf had a system.
A large training organisation feeding pilots in.
A large plane building system feeding new aircraft in
A large maintenance system at airfields repairing aircraft on site.
Radar detecting aircraft
An overall control centre plotting aircraft on a map
Local centres allocating fighters to raids .
They focused on bomber killing (because fighters couldn't do much to harm the navy and UK defences) . They were a multi national force and althought they didn't all fight in the Battle of Britain 15, 000 polish groundcrew, administrative staff and aviators fought in the RAF.

They flew only when it was necessary to kill bombers and largely ignored avoided fighter-only raids.

The Germans did not focus on anything. They bombed a few ships, a few airfields, a few factories. They lacked focus.

They thought the absence of patroling raf fighters meant there were not many left. But actually they were being sent up in batches to pick off bombers in lightening raids.

They famously thought there were "only 50 spitfires left" in September . With hurricanes it was more like 550.

Nazis had an easy win against a badly organised underfunded Spanish airfirce in the Spanish civil war . They were over confident and didn't understand that they needed to be professional and focused .

They were like a good local bunch of pals who tried to take on a team that was in the professional leagues (The RAF).

Their aircraft were superior t o most of the British aircraft ( hurricanes ) and equally to the (rarer) spitfire. But they had few replacements bad planning bad maintenance, had Polish, Hungarian and Czech slaves making parts for engines, no strategy, bad intelligence, poor coordination.