The Battle of Britain, 12th August to 30th September) was the name given to the struggle between the Royal Air Force and the Luftwaffe (German air force) to gain control of the air space over Britain. Unless the Germans won control of the air, the Royal Navy would be free to sink the invasion craft of 'Operation Sealion'.

The Battle began on 10 July 1940 and for the first few weeks the German bomber planes attacked convoys of British ships in the English Channel, ports and naval targets. In mid-August they spread the attacks more widely using nearly 2000 aircraft. Many German bombers - Junkers 88s, Dornier 17s and Heinkel Ills (31) -were shot down by the British fighter planes, the Spitfires and Hurricanes. What made the British fighters so effective was radar, a radio device which detected the approach of the German bombers.

Göering, commander of the Luftwaffe, ordered more German fighters to escort the bombers. This meant that German attacks had to be limited to targets within about 150 km, the effective range of the Messerschmitt 109. The Germans hoped to destroy the British fighters by drawing them into battle. This would then put Britain at the mercy of the German bombers. Air Marshal Dowding, who master-minded the British defence, kept as many Spitfires and Hurricanes out of the battle as possible and ordered those in combat to go for the German bombers but evade the fighters, thus frustrating the German plan.

Many German bombers, however, did get through to their targets and so much damage was done to British aerodromes that by early September it seemed as if the RAF would be unable to keep up the battle. But the British were given a breathing space when the Germans switched their efforts to raids on London, in revenge for a British raid on Berlin. This was a bad mistake on the part of the Germans because it relieved pressure on the British airfields at the critical moment. The Battle of Britain could have been said to be the first major turning point of the war for the Germans were checked for the first time; they were not invincible. Britain was to remain in the struggle thus facing Hitler with the fatal situation of war on two fronts.

The decisive battles were fought on Sunday 15th September 1940, the worst of the German raids on London. British fighters were drawn into the fighter-to-fighter battle the Germans had been seeking. These battles between fighter pilots were called 'dog-fights'. The pilot's tactical plan in an aerial dog-fight was to climb to a position above the enemy and, descending if possible out of the sun, to shoot him down from the rear, watching that another enemy was not trying to do the same to himself. The victim would try to turn out of the line of fire. At high speed the Messerschmitt 109 had to do this gradually in case its wings broke off but the Spitfire was more strongly built.

Both sides lost many aircraft, the Germans 1400, the British 800. The RAF was well supplied with aircraft but nearly ran out of pilots. Some young men were sent into battle only two weeks after qualifying as pilots. The inexperienced ones were quite often soon shot down. The strain of the long battle exhausted and demoralised the airmen. One was found to have fallen fast asleep as soon as he landed his Spitfire. But these brave men prevented the Luftwaffe from gaining control of the air space over Britain and Hitler realised he could not risk an invasion. Britain had survived. As Churchill said of the RAF pilots: 'Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.'