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In June 1940 the Second World War had seen Hitler conquer most of Europe before turning his attention to Britain, with plans for a sea borne invasion of our coastline.
But first he had to gain control of the airspace over the English Channel and so, on the 10th of July 1940, the Battle of Britain began and RAF pilots were called upon to defend our skies. Just 600 RAF fighters, with an average age of just 22, faced 4000 German bombers.
Now, seventy years later, in this special documentary for ITV1, actor Sir David Jason is taking a journey back to 1940 to find out how Britain managed to pull off a most unlikely and remarkable victory.
He says: “I was only a six month old baby when the Battle of Britain was raging overhead. I grew up in London, a city devastated by the bombing. So I owe my freedom to the people that fought that battle. I’ve always longed to know more about the pilots who kept the invaders at bay.”
In this hour-long programme, David tells the story of the three-month long battle and discovers that it was fought as much on the ground as in the air. He meets pilots who took to the skies to shoot down the enemy with just 15 seconds of ammunition, he sees the operations rooms where the battle was controlled from and the exact spot where Winston Churchill stood during a visit to one of them. He meets the engineers who kept the planes running for up to six scrambles a day per pilot and the men working in secret locations on the ground to spot enemy planes as they flew in overhead.
Plus, David takes to the skies in the Spitfire which shot down the first enemy aircraft on D-Day.
Tom Neil was a 19-year-old fighter pilot who flew throughout the battle and took down 13 enemy planes. He describes going on up to four interceptions per day and tells David that the best way to take the German planes down was to get behind them and get as close as possible before firing on them.
David visits Bentley Priory in Stanmore, North London, where Sir Hugh Dowding developed the secret of the Battle of Britain’s success – Fighter Command. This plan to save Britain from invasion was started in 1936 and former Air Chief Marshall, Sir Brian Burrage shows David the very spot where the experimental operations room was formed with a giant map of the UK and surrounding balconies to look down on it from.
David explains that Dowding had to know where the enemy planes were, so developed a network of intelligence using radar, which was a brand-new technology at the time, and the eyes and ears of thousands of spotters on the ground known as the Observer Corps.
Dowding’s system gave commanders a crucial edge, the ability to scramble interceptors to reach the enemy long before they reached their target.
Footage, from news reports at the time, shows one of the air command stations in operation and, as David takes in the atmosphere of the building and imagines the noise and activity there would have been, Sir Brian describes how important Bentley Priory was to the Battle of Britain.
He says: “It was absolutely vital, it was where all the thinking took place beforehand, a lot of the experimentation in command and control. And it was the nerve centre of the battle itself. But it was absolutely the place where the Battle of Britain was won from, in a command sense, and the Battle of Britain was the pivotal battle of the Second World War. It’s the point at which everything reversed. And it happened here.”
David visits an active RAF base where he is shown around the oldest air-worthy Spitfire in the world as he discovers what it took to keep the RAF’s fleet of planes combat ready at all times while under the constant threat of attack. He meets Joe Roddis, who was an 18-year-old flight mechanic during the battle, and he describes the checks that were in place before and after a plane took off and the importance of working efficiently with other mechanics and the pilot.
On the 18th of August 1940 180 bombs were dropped on RAF Kenley, one of the key airfields protecting London. David explains how this day is often described as the hardest day of the battle, as the RAF lost 68 aircraft and the Germans lost 69.
Pilot William Walker describes flying that day, saying: “There really was not time to be scared you were so involved with what you had to do.”
And David meets one of the Hurricane pilots also scrambled on the 18th of August 1940, Paul Farnes, who talks him through his log book and adds: “The whole thing was a complete shambles really, I mean, it was chaos. You just did your own thing and, once you’d expended all your ammunition, you got out of the way quick.
“The question of being outnumbered didn’t come into it because we were always outnumbered. It was not bravery. I don’t think anyone felt particularly brave. It was what we had been trained for. It was our job and you just got on and did it.”
Out of the nine planes which attacked RAF Kenley, four were destroyed and five were seriously damaged. One bomber was shot down by a Hurricane pilot and Ted Williams takes David to visit the exact spot where it came down.
By the end of August the Battle was at an all-time low with pilots being scrambled up to six times a day and a quarter of the RAF’s pilots being lost in just two weeks.
David meets Bill Green who flew 29 missions in just nine days before being gunned down by a German pilot. Bill takes David to the field where he landed after being forced to bail out at 18,000 feet, and he describes the moment his parachute was deployed. Bill makes David smile when he recalls the moment he landed, saying his boots had flown off and he was worried about what his wife would say if he stood in a cow pat in his new socks.
David visits a radar station which was one of 40 ringing the British coast and was one of the secret weapons in the battle. The stations, which were mainly manned by women, could give a 30 minute warning when enemy aircraft were 100 miles away.
The radar detected aircraft coming in from the sea, and, once they had crossed the coastline, Fighter Command relied on the 30,000 unarmed civilian aircraft spotters in the Observer Corps. David goes to one of the former posts, code-named Sugar Three, to meet former aircraft spotters Dennis Bates and John Elgar-Wynnie. They tell David how, using binoculars, aircraft handbooks and a telephone line, they could report how many aircraft were coming into the country and where they were going.
David tells the programme that by September of 1940, Hitler decided to change his tactics and, instead of bombing airfields, started to bomb cities. The Blitz had begun.
London was protected by Fighter Command’s 11 Group Airfields and its wartime operations room was at a secret underground bunker which David visits. The bunker is now part of the RAF museum and is laid out exactly as it would have been at the time. Museum curator Chris Wren tells David: “What took place here decided the fate of our country.”
Hazel Gregory, who was just 19 at the time, reveals how she worked in the room plotting the progress of the German bombers. She describes how she was there when Winston Churchill came to visit on the 15th of September when the Germans admitted defeat against Fighter Command. Unable to gain control of Britain’s airspace, Hitler turned his attentions to invading Russia.
As his journey comes to an end, David takes to the skies in a Spitfire with its owner Carolyn Grace. As he takes the controls and feels the power of the plane, he becomes quite emotional as he sees the White Cliffs of Dover. He then sits back to experience a victory roll over the cliffs.
David says: “The heroes who rode into battle in this breathtaking machine were not alone. For behind every pilot were the ‘many’ in airfields and operations rooms who were flying with them.
“In the defining battle of a nation, aircrew took on the Luftwaffe and won. Along with the glorious ‘few’, with their formidable Hurricanes and Spitfires, there are many other heroes to be thanked and remembered.
“I suppose the most important thing that I have learnt is the amount of people that were drawn together to back up and help the fighter pilots to do their job. It was an amazing feat and without them, and without it, we wouldn’t be here today.”
David Jason: Battle of Britain is produced and directed by Chris Malone. The executive producer is Ollie Tait.
Last edited: Wednesday, 1 September 2010
