Original subtitles

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NARRATOR: For over a hundred years,

battles have raged in the air for command of the skies.

If you don't have air supremacy, you're in trouble.

Since its earliest beginnings in World War I,

the aeroplane is the supreme weapon of the armed forces.

This was a real battle for civilisation, for humanity.

It revolutionised battle and changed the ways war was fought and won.

The F-117 has obviously changed how we design aircraft and air campaigns.

War drove innovation in the skies.

What we hear from the air force is, when the F-35 wasn't there, a lot of others died.

When F-35 was there, they reigned supreme.

Aircraft bred a new kind of hero.

The fate of entire nations depended on the bravery of a handful of men.

An appreciation of the extent to which young men

were willing to put their lives on the line for an ideal

is something we need to remember more often than we do.

In this episode: by 1940 Germany had conquered most of Europe.

Hitler's next target was a small island across the English Channel - Britain.

In the summer of that year, Britain prepared for an all-out air attack

to defend the country from Nazi Germany.

I think it is important to recognise that the Battle of Britain was really designed

to prevent the German invasion of the United Kingdom. That's what it was about.

Britain's Royal Air Force was in the frontline

to defend against a German invasion.

The Battle of Britain was the first huge air battle ever fought.

This would be an air battle that would decide the fate of Britain

and the course of World War II.

It was the first time that one nation had tried to defeat another

primarily by defeating its air force. The stakes were incredibly high.

I think the feeling of the German air force was,

"There's no enemy in the world we cannot fight against."

All that stood in the way of Nazi Germany

were the fighter pilots of Britain's Royal Air Force.

In air combat, pilots lived and died by the golden rule.

The element of surprise was absolutely vital.

Pilots of the Royal Air Force faced overwhelming odds

against the German Luftwaffe, which outnumbered British planes.

PATRICK: You've got men who can only fly so many times a day,

even though they did fly from dawn to dusk.

They were facing exhaustion. They were taking losses.

The fight for freedom was about to begin.

It was one of the great decisive battles of the Second World War.

(ALL CHEERING AND APPLAUDING)

July 1940.

Britain was about to fight an air war against the German Luftwaffe air force.

It would be one of the most decisive battles of World War II.

Britain faced the might of the Third Reich alone.

After the evacuation of British troops at Dunkirk in May 1940

and the fall of France to Nazi Germany,

Hitler's continued conquest of Europe and Britain seemed unstoppable.

Britain is in a terrible state in the summer of 1940.

It's fought a battle in Europe against the Germans.

It's been very badly beaten, as have the French.

France is about to fall. There's been this ignominious Dunkirk episode,

where the entire British army is evacuated,

leaving all its equipment behind.

Hitler drew up plans to invade Britain,

codenamed Operation Sea Lion.

But standing in his way were the pilots of the Royal Air Force.

The other thing was, it was recognised very early on

that if they were to have any chance of success,

they would have to defeat Britain in the air,

or at least wear down its air defences.

German Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering

was determined to strike immediately,

when the Royal Air Force was at its weakest.

I think we ought to remember that the RAF have been in action throughout the Battle of France.

They've been fighting very hard there.

They then had to defend the British troops

as they were being evacuated off the beaches of Dunkirk.

So they've been fighting very, very hard. They had taken a lot of losses.

We had less fighter pilots than they had.

So their numbering outnumbered us completely.

Germany's Hermann Goering thought he could win

the battle for the skies in just four weeks.

His first targets were British shipping and ports.

Britain imported 100% of its oil, 50% of its food

and 60% of its raw materials.

By targeting shipping convoys,

he believed he could quickly bring Britain to its knees.

There's no disguising the fact that two-thirds of these essential goods came from overseas.

If you couldn't keep the sea lanes open, then you were in real trouble.

Defending shipping convoys near to Britain's shores

was the job of Britain's fighter planes.

Leading the charge was the legendary Supermarine Spitfire.

PATRICK: The Spitfire was a wonderful machine, but it was also a wonderful symbol.

People came to see it as a symbol of Britishness quite early on.

It was small, but it was very strong, and it was very resolute,

very determined, and deadly when aroused.

So it became a great British symbol,

as well as being a fantastic fighting machine.

Armed with eight 7.7 Browning machine guns,

the Spitfire could attack at speeds of over 360mph at high altitude.

Spitfires were to do what was called, in military parlance, fly top cover,

to protect the Hurricanes from the escorting fighters.

Flying alongside the Spitfire was the Hawker Hurricane.

The Hurricane was given the role of attacking the bombers.

The Spitfire was used to attack the top-cover fighters.

These were the British fighter planes

that would take on the German Luftwaffe.

Both types of fighters used a combat air tactic learned from World War I.

The fighter would use the sun to blind the enemy.

Both of them would, if possible, try to get up-sun or into the sun,

because we all know, if you're trying to look into the sun, you can't see anything at all.

"Beware of the Hun in the sun." But the Germans would say,

"Beware of the Spitfire or the Hurricane in the sun."

It gives them a visual advantage to dive down onto the aircraft.

The opening salvos in the Battle of Britain began in July 1940,

as the German Luftwaffe began targeting shipping

with small raids on Britain's southern shores.

PATRICK: The first, opening phase was with German aircraft

in considerable, but not enormous numbers,

coming over the coast, shooting up convoys,

doing reconnaissance missions to find out where the bases were.

Germany needed to know how powerful Britain's defences were.

During this period, to a degree,

the Germans are testing Britain's defences by attacking soft targets

and testing how the British respond.

But during the 1930s,

Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, the controller of Fighter Command,

created a network of radar stations to protect Britain.

By the time the battle opened, we actually had a pretty good radar system

which would give us plenty of warning

of the arrival of big fleets of aircraft.

And it allowed that information to be filtered back to command and control centres

that could then decide how to react to it.

By 1940, a chain of 20 radar stations were built on Britain's coast,

ready to give early warning of enemy planes.

It was, at the time, the most elaborate defensive network in existence.

The advanced technology of radar wasn't the only defence the British had, though.

All along the coast, stationed on small piles of sandbags,

binoculars in hand, 30,000 men and women of the Observer Corps

scanned the skies for enemy planes.

The combination of radar and manned observation posts

was known as the Dowding System.

NATASHA: What was crucial about it was that it was

filtering out information that was being brought

by all of this new information that we'd be using

with radar, with the Observer Corps.

And that that information was filtering down into usable information.

The speed at which that happened was incredible.

They had, like, four minutes to be able to turn this information around.

Eyesight was still an essential part of Britain's defences.

They were vital. Without that information, without men on the ground,

without the radar that came through that was giving them information,

without the Royal Observer Corps,

we wouldn't be where we are today.

They were the eyes and ears of Britain.

Information from British radar stations

began identifying German planes off its coast.

Bentley Priory was the home of Fighter Command

during the Second World War.

It is just the most important place for the Battle of Britain.

It was the absolute action centre for where everything came in and went out.

Sir Hugh Dowding created the network

to marshal his air force effectively against the enemy.

OVERY: You had to be able to hold it together, centrally control it,

direct fighters to where the fighting was actually needed.

And he insisted, pushed that all through in the late 1930s.

On the morning of July 10th 1940,

a fleet of merchant ships prepared to set out to sea,

headed for Dorset on the south coast.

That's when big a convoy called Bread

came out into the Channel from the Thames estuary

and was attacked in force by German aircraft.

They themselves were then attacked in turn by the defenders.

It was the target for an armada of German raiders. (PHONE RINGS)

Britain's Number 74 Squadron were scrambled to intercept German aircraft.

(BELL RINGING) But the British fighters were in for a surprise.

The German tactics were actually pretty good.

You'd have these big armadas of bombers coming in at 15,000 feet.

And then above them, lurking in the sun,

were these great swarms of Me-109s.

So, they were there to come down, dive on the British fighters

as they came in to attack the bombers.

And that worked quite well.

But both the British Spitfire and Hurricane fighters

were about to confront the German Luftwaffe's lethal fighter plane.

A plane that had previously conquered

both the French and Polish air forces.

The Messerschmitt Me-109.

JULIAN: It was also deadly against the French and the British,

which is actually what controlled the skies over France,

and ended up with Britain coming into the Battle of Britain on its own,

trying to match the fighters that Germany already had.

(RINGING)

What followed next on July the 10th

was the first dogfight of the Battle of Britain.

German and British planes engaged in a violent game of tag

above the Straits of Dover on Britain's south coast.

For the first time, these guys would be involved in a mass battle.

They try to get behind each other or underneath each other, inflict some damage.

Always looking out behind them for what's going on. They wheel away and so on.

Everywhere you look, there's drama.

There are machines flashing in front of you, over you, under you.

It's incredibly hard to actually work out what's going on.

Who is friend and who is foe. And so it's massive confusion.

British RAF pilots jostled for position in the skies over England.

And Hurricanes really took the brunt of the initial attacks in the Battle of Britain.

Now, the Hurricane aircraft is manoeuvrable and reasonably fast.

It was the equal of both the Messerschmitt 109

and the Spitfire of the time and was more manoeuvrable.

It could pull tighter turns.

Manoeuvrability for British fighters was a very important aspect,

I think, of their success during this period.

It wasn't quite as good in acceleration as the Spitfire

or its opponent, the Me-109,

but it made up for that in other ways

by its manoeuvrability and strength.

It could take a lot of punishment without actually being knocked down.

Spearheading the German aerial attacks on Britain,

the Messerschmitt Me-109 set about decimating British fighter squadrons,

setting the stage for a British defeat.

(BELL RINGING)

July 1940. The Battle of Britain had begun.

Britain was alone in its fight to defend

against the might of the German air force, the Luftwaffe.

In combat, British pilots fell vulnerable to the Spitfire's weaknesses.

If there was a weakness,

it was really the absence of two things.

One is, initially, self-sealing tanks. The Germans had self-sealing tanks.

So that meant, if your fuel tank got hit,

a British plane would immediately erupt into flames in the early days, which meant you were a goner.

The other thing, on the mechanical front, was the absence of fuel injection.

The Me-109 had an advantage which neither the Hurricane

nor the Spitfire could match.

The Me-109 had a Daimler-Benz engine, which had fuel injection.

Which meant that the Messerschmitt could outmanoeuvre

a lot of the aircraft it came up against.

One of the techniques that a 109 pilot would use

to get away from another aircraft

or to put himself into a better position to attack it

would be to bunt,

which is to push the nose of the aircraft over, which gets negative G.

The engine would not, of course, lose any power.

It would continue working all the way down.

The Spitfire or the Hurricane that's behind him,

if that bunts over like that,

the negative G causes the floats to go up

and the engine could actually stop working for some time.

Unable to function when the Spitfire was forced into a steep dive,

the engine was starved of fuel and stalled.

The engine that was fuel-injected in the 109 just kept going,

so he immediately accelerated away into the dive.

This meant that the Messerschmitt engine could still fire on all cylinders,

even in a loop or a dive.

But the Spitfire, which used gravity to pump fuel, could not.

Losing power, the Spitfire was vulnerable to attack from the Messerschmitt.

And that few seconds without power could be the difference between life and death.

The German Messerschmitt Me-109 was a force to be reckoned with.

The Me-109 was more heavily armed

and it took some time before Fighter Command recognised

that the machine guns they had were not entirely satisfactory.

But the Me-109 had some fatal drawbacks for its pilots, too.

The Messerschmitt 109, due to its very narrow landing gear,

was a very difficult aircraft for take-off and landing.

And as many aircraft and pilots were lost in landing and take-off accidents

as were actually lost in the air-to-air combat.

But once mastered, it was a lethal killing machine.

The 109 was a brand-new, very fast aircraft,

with a very powerful engine,

and a very good engine, which was a little better than the British engines.

What you're trying to do is get behind your opponent

and hit him with your machine-gun bullets.

It's a question then of who can get

on the tail of the other aircraft the quickest.

As well as fighting the enemy,

pilots had to battle against immense G-forces.

In a steep turn or dive, body weight increases up to six times,

with potentially fatal results.

Blacking out was a completely routine event.

So, you're dealing with all this, and then you have to work out

how to shoot this very nimble-moving object in front of you.

Success or failure depends on three things.

It depends on the machine, it depends on your skill as a pilot

and it depends also on luck.

Each British pilot chose their own way

to attack the German enemy.

There were many different ways of attacking a bomber fleet.

You could attack it from the sides. Some people chose to attack it head-on,

which was hair-raising action, as you can imagine,

which required enormous guts.

Attacking German bombers head-on

was a tactic Britain's 111 Squadron chose to use

when it scrambled to meet the Luftwaffe.

If you see a fighter plane coming straight at you,

it's a very, very unnerving experience

and your instinct is to turn away, which is what many of these bombers did.

It was one way in which you might be able

to inflict fatal damage on the bomber aircraft.

They're both moving at extremely high speed,

so you have to be absolutely razor-sharp in your reactions

to make sure that you inflict damage and then avoid the worst.

It broke up the formation, which meant they were less able to defend themselves

and it meant for them, effectively, the attack was over,

and they really were heading for home.

Defending Britain's shores were pilots from all over Europe.

NATASHA: There were about 3,000 pilots from 17 different countries

who fought throughout the Battle of Britain.

And the Polish and the Czechs were said to be

some of the most adventurous and daring of all of our pilots.

Survival rates for air crew increased,

as more pilots gained combat experience.

The first thing they learnt was that they could do it, they could blunt these attacks.

And they were learning all the time. Every day they went up,

every minute spent in combat, you were learning something new.

When they got back on the ground, they would be talking: what did you see? How did you deal with that?

This hadn't been done before, so they were making it up as they went along.

So it was really learning on the job.

And they learned very successfully and very quickly.

The German Luftwaffe was targeting British convoys of merchant ships

to choke off vitally needed supplies.

Defending them were Britain's fighter pilots.

At the same time as the Bread convoy from London was under attack,

Spitfires of Britain's 610 Squadron were scrambled from Biggin Hill

to engage with another group of Me-109s

roaring over Dover on England's southeast coast,

searching for more targets.

This is the start of this, you know, constant tempo of daily battles.

Fighters coming out to meet them, attacking the bombers,

taking on the fighter escorts in these dogfights.

So, from then on, you've got these daily battles that ebb and flow.

The numbers get bigger and bigger and bigger.

The raids continued.

Seventy German bombers flew in from the west,

taking radar stations by surprise, attacking Swansea in Wales.

The bombers inflicted serious damage to ships, as well as the city.

Meanwhile, Fighter Command wrestled with the problem

of multiple simultaneous attacks by the German air force.

At the same time as attacking Swansea,

the German air force was bombing the Bread convoy over Dover

on England's south coast.

The problem for Fighter Command was: do you engage the German air force when they're doing it?

Cos if they're not attacking you, they're attacking this convoy.

The RAF's response to this were fighter patrols over the Channel

and responding to relevant German threats as and when they came up.

Dowding scrambled a number of squadrons

and then, realising the strength of the German force, he scrambled more fighters,

and there was a huge dogfight which took place across the convoy.

Over 100 planes wheeled above the Bread convoy,

engaged in a massive dogfight.

British Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding's pilots

successfully resisted the German attack.

The Dowding System, the early-warning system of radar and eyesight,

also proved invaluable to British defence.

One of the many problems the Germans faced in the Battle of Britain

was that they underestimated the British radar chain completely.

They didn't realise that once they were being engaged by enemy aircraft,

they were being engaged by an aircraft that had been alerted by radar.

Despite the edge the home chain system gave its squadrons,

Fighter Command struggled for survival,

as wave after wave of German fighters attacked British airfields.

Impatient to launch his invasion on Britain,

Hitler ordered a full-scale aerial assault.

The famous air battle in the summer of 1940

for control of Britain's skies had begun.

Hitler had two clear objectives. The first, to blockade the Channel

and choke Britain's lifeline of convoys.

The second, to clear the skies of British fighter planes.

The whole of southern Britain is vulnerable.

You can expect to see enemy aircraft,

particularly in places which fall into this German plan,

i.e. the ports like Southampton, and later on Plymouth.

As German fighters attacked Britain's convoys,

Fighter Command's losses mounted.

In under one month, 120 British planes

had been destroyed or damaged, with nearly 77 pilots killed.

The effectiveness of Fighter Command was in serious doubt.

Throughout the summer of 1940, the RAF suffered persistent losses.

Coastal Command, which had slow-flying and ineffective aircraft,

also suffered really very heavy losses.

The age band for the Battle of Britain pilots

was from about 19 to 23.

And the length of time that they stayed alive was not very long at all.

It was a matter of weeks for the average pilot.

If you got through, say, the first six weeks,

then you had a much greater chance of surviving.

However good they were as pilots, they didn't have much experience

at shooting people down and going into combat.

So serious was the shortage of British pilots

that training was cut down from six months to just four weeks.

Some arrived on squadrons

with only a handful of hours in Spitfires or Hurricanes.

PATRICK: They aren't familiar with the machine

and their training isn't as thorough as it was for those who were there at the beginning.

By mid-July 1940, British fighter squadrons

desperately needed more planes.

Lord Beaverbrook, the British newspaper magnate,

was given the task of mobilising greater aircraft production.

So, he became the minister of aircraft production.

And he shouted at people.

He did try to make sure that every effort was being made.

Throughout all of July, Fighter Command had mounted

over 12,000 sorties against German planes.

By that stage, the Germans had decided

the most effective way of getting at British shipping was to use the dive bomber,

but they would need to be escorted, as other bombers would be, by a large body of fighters.

July 14th.

The German raiders targeted another convoy of merchant ships

heading along England's south coast.

Twelve Spitfires from the 610 Squadron,

together with seven Hurricanes from the 151st Squadron

and nine from 615 Squadron, were scrambled to meet them.

They successfully fought off the raiders.

Despite the July raids, the German Luftwaffe was failing to achieve

the success Hitler was hoping for to invade Britain.

By contrast, German victory had been achieved over landlocked Europe

through lightning air strikes, the Blitzkrieg.

The same tactics couldn't be used across the English Channel divide.

And Britain's fighter pilots were proving harder to defeat.

German aircraft had a number of disadvantages in the Battle of Britain.

The most obvious of course was that existing fighters

had relatively small fuel capacity,

and so they could engage in combat over southern England

for little more than 20 minutes, and then make their way back.

Otherwise, you'll crash in the Channel, as many of them did.

As July came to a close,

attacks on Dover in the south of England

rose in frequency and strength.

British pilots were constantly scrambled

to take on the German fighters

in another fight to the death in the air.

DUDLEY: Pilots would probably be woken at about 4 o'clock in the morning.

Dressed in their pyjamas, they'd go out to the aeroplanes,

which had been looked after, all night sometimes, by the ground crew.

So they didn't sleep at all in many cases,

repairing the aircraft, getting them ready.

At about 4 o'clock, the pilot would go out,

climb into the aeroplane, start it up,

make sure everything was ready, shut it down,

and then he'd go back to his billet

until that terrible noise of the bell were going

and then they would run for their aeroplanes.

Now, this was an exhausting process,

so you could be on standby from dawn.

You could fly your first operation at 5 o'clock in the morning

and you could still be at it at 9 o'clock at night.

You might have gone out five or six times during that day.

Pilots longed for a grey, overcast day

to recover from the relentless battles.

If it looks like flying is going to be difficult,

they're rejoicing, because it will give them a brief respite.

The diaries and the letters talk about this awful weariness that you never escape from.

Even if you get a day off, you never actually catch up on your sleep.

You never get back to that point where you were at the beginning of your tour.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding

ordered his pilots to take eight hours off in every 24

and a continuous rest of 24 hours each week.

Dowding understood that there was a limit to what you could ask pilots to do.

It's exhausting, draining, to do it day after day.

The adrenaline works a bit,

but after a while, it is a difficult thing to do continuously.

It wasn't only Britain's Fighter Command that was under pressure.

A month after the Battle of Britain began,

the German Luftwaffe had lost 500 pilots and crew.

There's a lull in hostilities, but it was the quiet before the storm.

At the beginning of August, the shape of the battle starts to alter.

The emphasis now is on attacking the RAF,

attacking its infrastructure, attacking its bases.

The British airfields weren't the only military targets.

The early-warning radar system was targeted too.

August the 11th, 1940.

Isle of Wight radar station at Ventnor

reported a heavy raid assembling over the Cherbourg peninsula.

British Spitfires from 609 Squadron at Warmwell

and Hurricanes from 145th Squadron from Tangmere were scrambled.

Six others were put on readiness.

The day for an all-out assault to destroy British Fighter Command

came on the 13th of August.

Operation Eagle Day.

Eagle Day is meant to be the climax of the Eagle attack.

So, this is when the Luftwaffe would take on the RAF head-to-head and destroy it.

Goering had been huffing and puffing through August.

Finally, he said, "Come on. I want you to destroy the RAF in four days."

I think Goering believed it was possible, actually,

that the RAF could be destroyed in four days.

German Reichsmarschall Goering demanding nothing less

than the total destruction of Fighter Command.

And with the fall of Fighter Command, so Britain would fall.

We start to see attacks against RAF Fighter Command airfields in the southeast,

in an attempt to take out RAF strength and destroy its infrastructure.

So, we see attacks against airfields such as Manston and Biggin Hill.

On the 16th, three days later, Tangmere suffered its worst ever day.

It was the most horrendous attack.

It started late morning, with probably about 70 aircraft,

a mixture of Stukas, Junkers 87s,

and the twin-engine bombers, the Junkers 88s,

setting off from the northern French coast towards Portsmouth.

The German raiders split into separate groups,

each headed for Southampton, Portsmouth and Tangmere.

And two formations of Hurricane had been launched from Tangmere.

Spitfires, remember, are heading for high level to attack the fighters

and the two Hurricane formations are now both heading

to attack these guys as they attack Tangmere.

And this is the main cut and thrust of the period,

with the RAF seeking to respond to those threats, scrambling fighters,

the old idea of what nowadays we would call quick-reaction alert.

Five of the Stukas were shot down into the Solent itself.

During the course of about a 10-hour period or so,

launched somewhere in the region of 1,500 sorties against targets in England.

DR OVERY: Tangmere was really very, very heavily damaged.

The Battle of Britain stretched pilots of the Royal Air Force to their very limits.

You're dealing with finite resources.

You've got men who can only fly so many times a day,

even though they did fly from dawn to dusk.

They were facing exhaustion, they were taking losses, et cetera.

Courage is a finite commodity.

And I think it's part of their achievement

that they were able to keep those reserves of resolve, if you like,

going right until the battle was won.

The German Luftwaffe continued its relentless attacks.

The airfields of southeast England were facing total destruction.

August 1940.

In the early years of World War II,

the Battle of Britain raged over Britain's skies

as British fighter pilots fought the German Luftwaffe for air superiority.

German fighters continued their relentless onslaught

on Britain's airfields in southern England.

Their objective: to destroy Britain's Air Force,

to pave the way for the German invasion of Britain.

So, in the middle of August, you start seeing

really big formations of German bombers.

Three hundred bombers in one formation.

At midday on August the 18th,

radar reported the largest build-up yet of German aircraft.

Britain's Fighter Group 11 was brought to readiness.

Squadron 501 was already in the air, patrolling Canterbury and Margate

on England's south coast to protect its airfields.

A further four British squadrons were ordered up to guard Biggin Hill and Kenley.

Meanwhile, the German bombers were approaching their target.

First on the list was Kenley airfield, just 15 miles from London.

A group of German bombers crossed the English Channel at 100 feet, avoiding radar detection.

Taking advantage of ideal flying conditions,

German bombers found their targets at Kenley airfield,

destroying all 10 hangars and six Hurricanes,

killing 12 and injuring 20.

For the RAF, the really important date was August the 18th,

because that was the first day of good, clear weather.

The Luftwaffe did finally manage to attack

a number of important Fighter Command stations very seriously.

In the middle of August, you have three days of intense fighting,

when some of the fighter stations get very badly beaten up.

During the raids on August the 18th,

the German Luftwaffe lost twice as many planes as British Fighter Command.

But the raids continued relentlessly every day.

DR OVERY: On August the 18th, the German air force did engage in a number of very heavy raids

on Fighter Command stations across Sussex and Kent, inflicting quite heavy damage,

particularly on Biggin Hill and on a number of other stations.

The attack on Biggin Hill airfield wasn't the only one of its kind.

During August 1940, German raids increased pressure on Britain's Fighter Command.

For the RAF, it was clear that something had changed.

It was clear now that the hit-and-run raids,

the raids on the Channel and so on, had all been a preliminary.

They sort of appeared from August the 18th,

really, as the period when they were up against it.

But it didn't stop there. On the 30th of August,

hundreds of German bombers and fighters

came across the Channel over Kent in the southeast of England

towards the airfields protecting London.

British Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding's other concern

was that his Group Sector 11 stations,

including Debden, Kenley and Biggin Hill, were coming under heavy attack.

The first week of September for both sides was a gruelling time.

Both sides were exhausted.

The pilots on both sides showed significant anxiety symptoms and so on.

The tension of doing this over and over and over again was...

Both sides were getting exhausted.

One last, final effort was made to get at Fighter Command,

because breathing down Goering's neck was Hitler saying,

"Am I going to invade? Am I not going to invade?

We've got two weeks left. What are we going to do?"

Goering said, "Oh, it will be all over in two days."

So, that week, the first week in September, very heavy losses on both sides.

Six of the seven British Group Sector 11 airfields

were bombed to the point of collapse.

Five of its advanced airfields were seriously damaged.

The German air raids inflicted heavy losses on both sides.

After months of unrelenting, furious aerial combat,

Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding was facing the inevitable -

the defeat of British Fighter Command at the hands of the German Luftwaffe.

DR MAHONEY: Towards the end of August 1940, early September,

they were actually causing attrition to the RAF.

But just as it seemed the final blows were about to fall,

the German Luftwaffe changed tactics. (PHONE RINGING)

In September 1940, the Luftwaffe shifts its focus of attacks

from RAF Fighter Command airfields to industrial targets and civilian targets.

The German air raids that bombed British cities

famously became known as the Blitz.

But it had a silver lining for Britain's Fighter Command.

This is important for the RAF, in particular the Fighter Command,

as it gives them a degree of breathing space

to recover from losses suffered during the third period of the battle,

and eventually come back in force.

The change in strategy from bombing British airfields to bombing Britain's cities

allowed Fighter Command to regroup and rebuild.

It was Reichsmarschall Goering's fatal error.

It begins in the afternoon with a huge raid on London.

It's the first time London has really been hit hard.

There have been bombs scattered around London, but nothing like this.

It's a terrible new development. But at the same time, it's a salvation,

because the Luftwaffe has switched away from attacking RAF targets

and it's now hit a big target, which you can't possibly hope to destroy.

This was a terrible mistake by the Germans, a terrible mistake by Hitler.

On September the 15th, Germany's Luftwaffe assembled for a major raid on London.

They were met by 15 British Hurricane squadrons

and eight Spitfire squadrons.

On this day, the Germans launch an all-out attack against Britain,

thinking that they had shattered RAF Fighter Command

and that they could operate freely over Britain.

Much to their surprise, RAF Fighter Command was reinforced,

and in aerial battles over London,

the Luftwaffe suffered heavy defeats to the British.

RAF Fighter Command's strength continues to grow,

partly as a result of some of the pressure relieved

when the Germans changed their attacks to cities.

London was hit by day or by night for the next 56 out of 57 days.

In the afternoon, 400 German fighters

escorted 150 bombers, staggered in three waves.

Britain's RAF scrambled eight squadrons

to patrol over Sheerness, Chelmsford, Kenley and Hornchurch in Essex.

Four more British squadrons were ordered up, and then another eight.

A total of 250 British fighters were in the air.

For the first time, the German fighters were outnumbered.

From the west, a force of 80 German bombers

headed across Surrey towards London.

They were met by Hurricanes from 217 Squadron

and 607 Squadron from Tangmere.

They tore into them.

During the Blitz period, the German strategy essentially sought

to coerce the British government into surrender.

But the public were surprisingly resilient to German attacks

and morale remained relatively high.

The so-called Blitz spirit.

This time, Britain's Fighter Command

overwhelmed the airborne German raiders.

And they inflicted very heavy damage.

25% of the bomber force destroyed or heavily damaged.

No air force can stand that rate of attrition for more than a few days.

As Britain's Fighter Command rebuilt,

the whole defence process of detection, interception and destruction worked.

There's no doubt that the September battles showed

that Fighter Command had finished its apprenticeship,

that it was now fully trained.

Now experienced and replenished,

the full force of Britain's fighter pilots ranged against the failing German Luftwaffe

to finish the battle.

The official end of the Battle of Britain was October the 31st 1940.

The invasion plan had not worked.

The battle officially ended on the 31st of October,

and the plan to invade Britain is on hold.

And there's no prospect of it being resuscitated any time soon.

In fact, Hitler is planning to invade Russia,

so the invasion threat to Britain, such as it was, is over.

The Battle of Britain saw the destruction of 1,733 of Germany's Luftwaffe planes.

British Fighter Command lost 915 aircraft.

Of the 2,917 pilots under Britain's Fighter Command

who took part in the air battles of 1940,

544 had died.

Britain's Prime Minister Winston Churchill

famously made a speech in the House of Commons, broadcast on radio,

honouring the few, the pilots of Fighter Command.

CHURCHILL: Never in the field of human conflict

was so much owed by so many to so few.

It was one of the great decisive battles of the Second World War.

I think nothing in the Second World War was more important for the British

than the air defence put up by the RAF in 1940.

The Battle of Britain became a symbol of British defiance against Hitler,

British defiance against the Axis,

British defiance against all those forces of darkness

that were going to overwhelm the world.

Operation Sea Lion, Hitler's plan to invade Britain,

was postponed indefinitely.

The Battle of Britain had been won.

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