The Battle of Britain and Sir Winston Churchill

The Battle of Britain and Sir Winston Churchill

Shortly after the Battle of Britain Sir Winston Churchill, the prime minister of Great Britain, is quoted as exclaiming, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." The few that Churchill was referring to were the brave aircrew that undertook the daunting task of repelling the massive offensive by the dreaded German air corps, the Luftwaffe. In the year 1940 Adolf Hitler ordered an offensive in coordination with an attempted invasion of the isle of Britain. The only way Hitler was going to accomplish this great feat was the assert the power of his Air Force. In November of 1940 after months of constant bombardment of the English coastal cities, the Royal Air Force of Britain was ordered to begin attack on Germany. This rather inexperienced group of rookie pilots was successfully able to repel the German attacks and force Hitler into a direct attack upon London. It was this major flaw in the German invasion plan that caused the defeat of Germany just a few years later. The unknown story is that of the pilots that defeated the German squadrons. Of these pilots roughly sixty percent were Canadian born pilots and over seventy-five percent were Canadian trained. Without the contribution of the Canadian Royal Air Force contingent, the British would not have been able to affectively defend England from the attack of the German Luftwaffe.

In order to completely understand the involvement by Canadian forces one must first discover what exactly the Canucks were doing in the war. The Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) played three roles throughout World War II. The first of these roles was the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan; they would e...

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...t of all allied forces. Canada made the largest contribution by any commonwealth towards the allied forces during World War II. Without the BCATP and the insurgence of thousands of aircrew it would have been extremely difficult for the Allied powers to stand much of a chance against the might of Germany.

Bibliography:

Bibliography:

Secondary-

http://www.cp-tel.net/miller/BilLee/quotes/Churchill.html

http://www.airforce.dnd.ca

http://www.battleofbritain.net

http://www.valourandhorror.com

www.rcaf.com/bob

http://home.istan.ca/~421squadron/

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/8723/

http://history.acusd.edu/gen/WW2Timeline/Prelude13.html

Primary-

http://avstop.com/History/AroundTheWorld/Poland/accounts.html

"Air Battle Over London, 1940," EyeWitness - history through the eyes of those who lived it, www.ibiscom.com (2000).