The Battle of Britain was the most important campaign in the history of the RAF. That it was fought and won was down to three men. The first was Winston Churchill. He decided to fight it. The second was Hugh Dowding. He built the system that made victory possible. The third was Keith Park. He wielded the weapon that Dowding had forged and Churchill decided to use– Stephen Bungay
Before any account of the Battle of Britain, fought in our skies during the glorious summer of 1940, it is important to understand why it came to be fought at all. While Hitler re-armed massively throughout the 1930s, Britain and France relentlessly pursued the suicidal policy of appeasement. Our Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, was in favour of scrapping the RAF as useless in modern warfare because, as he said: “The bomber will always get through.” We helped the Luftwaffe by selling them 118 Merlin aero engines – the same superb machine which powered our Spitfires. When Churchill objected to this he was told by Baldwin and Chamberlain that any attempt to stop the sale would amount to an interference with free trade. But Churchill was slandered as a warmonger. When he was being mentioned as the best man to head our national defence, Baldwin refused, saying, appeasingly: “If I appoint Winston, Hitler will be offended.”
