Long may we pay tribute to the brave ‘few’

The 80th anniversary of the Battle of Britain will be marked online only this year, but the images are indelible. David Behrens reports.

IT WAS one of the defining moments in our nation’s history, but in the midst of another, more current one, there will be little ceremony attending the 80th anniversary this summer of the Battle of Britain.

Only three of Churchill’s “few” remain now and all are centenarians. They are the last of the RAF pilots who defended the skies above southern England from the Luftwaffe from July to October 1940. Even as the Prime Minister delivered his stirring address – never was so much owed by so many to so few, he said – the Blitz had begun and Britain remained alone.

The announcement earlier in the week that this year’s commemoration would take place online and not in person, robs the country of perhaps a last chance to thank personally the surviving pilots on a landmark anniversary.

But as Group Captain Patrick Tootal, of the Battle of Britain Memorial Trust put it, the same resolve in the face of adversity would be shown this year as was demonstrated by the men of the RAF back in 1940.

Today’s selection of pictures from the archive illustrates the magnitude of their heroism as they embarked upon an epic struggle whose sheer scale is hard to comprehend today. From a crew of around 3,000, only half survived the 112 days of battle. More than 3,000 aircraft from both sides were shot down and 544 RAF command pilots died.

Some 2,500 Luftwaffe aircrew were also killed, yet the numbers are dwarfed by the 40,000 civilian casualties during the ensuing eight-month Blitz, carried out on Hitler’s orders when it became clear that Germany could not achieve supremacy in the skies.

Despite this, a recent study by the RAF Benevolent Fund found that fewer than half of today’s 18 to 24-year olds have any comprehension of either the Blitz or the Battle of Britain.

PICTURES: DAVIS/TOPICAL PRESS AGENCY/HULTON ARCHIVE/FOX PHOTOS/GETTY IMAGES. REACH FOR THE SKIES: British pilots waiting to take off from an RAF fighter command station during the Battle of Britain. RAF pilots gallantly defended the skies above southern England from the German Luftwaffe from July to October 1940.

AIR SUPREMACY: From top to bottom, a portrait of Pilot Officer Rupert F Smythe of No 32 Squadron Royal Air Force Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain; an improved Spitfire is pushed onto the runway by a group of pilots circa 1940; three young women giving the thumbs-up through Union flags used to cover the broken windows in London, in the early days of the Blitz, September 1940; three Hawker Hurricane MkI fighters of No. 303 (Polish) Squadron Royal Air Force.

CASUALTIES: Top, RAF personnel examine the wreckage of a Messerschmitt BF 109E-1 which crash landed near Queen Anne’s Gate in Windsor Great Park during the Battle of Britain; above, Flying Officer Anthony Eyre DFC debriefs with his squadron’s Intelligence Officer having just shot down two enemy aircraft in August 1940.

INTO BATTLE: Hawker Hurricane MkI monoplane fighters of No 501 (County of Gloucester) Squadron Royal Auxiliary Air Force take off for another sortie during the Battle of Britain, having just refuelled and rearmed in September 1940 at RAF Hawkinge, Kent.

PICTURES: FOX PHOTOS/CENTRAL PRESS/HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES. EPIC STRUGGLE: Main, Battle of Britain pilots relax beside one of their Hawker Hurricane Mk1 fighters; left, a gunner in his turret; above, two RAF pilots; right, a munitions store at a fighter station at the height of the Battle of Britain.