It’s rare someone takes issue with Winston Churchill’s statement about the Battle of Britain that “[n]ever in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” But this book does.
Incidentally, according to Pug Ismay, Churchill’s first attempt was “never in human history was so much owed by so many to so few.” Ismay asked “what about Jesus and his disciples”? Churchill immediately added the qualifier “in the field of human conflict.”
This 2010 US Naval Institute Press book takes issue with the credit given to the RAF fighter pilots for saving Britain from invasion after the fall of France, arguing that it was in fact the Royal Navy, and not Fighter Command that made an invasion of Britain impossible during the summer of 1940. In fact many commentators include the RAF bomber pilots in “the few” since their spoiling raids on not just the cities of Germany, but on the German airfields in France and the buildup of barges for the cross channel invasion played a critical role in convincing Germany that an invasion was not possible.
Where Cumming adds to the conversation is in his insistence that there is a blind spot when it comes to analyzing whether Germany could have in fact invaded Britain, and that is that the Royal Navy retained unquestioned control of the necessary waterways. The situation was in fact analogous to the Napoleonic wars when Earl St. Vincent told the Board of Admiralty “I do not say, my Lords, that the French will not come. I say only they will not come by sea.”
But it was not in Britain’s national interest to present itself to its potential savior the United States as impregnable and safe behind the unchallenged supremacy of the Royal Navy. Instead, it was better served by presenting itself as in mortal danger, saved by young, handsome fighter pilots who were daily taking on the Luftwaffe and winning.
But as Cumming points out, in many ways the RAF’s fighters were not “winning”. They were unable to protect their own infrastructure, nor were they able to stop German bombers from attacking British cities that will. What they were able to do was provide a stubborn defense on a daily basis which showed both Germany and the United States that Britain would not surrender, and could remain in the fight, albeit with American material aid. While the terrible attrition that Fighter Command inflicted on the overstretched Luftwaffe would not be known for some time (it claimed more kills than it should have, but the actual effect of even roughly equal aircraft losses was catastrophic to the Luftwaffe in a way that was not known at the time).
While the book reflects a somewhat parochial interest, and is written with hindsight not available in 1940, when the advent of aerial bombardment and aerial assaults involving paratroopers made it unclear whether Britain was in fact safe from invasion, it does provide a useful additional insight into who actually should count among “the few”.
from Texas Bar Today https://ift.tt/3EnnxSN
via Abogado Aly Website
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