In the summer of 1940, the vaunted Luftwaffe, fresh from its victories in the skies of France and the Low Countries, began its aerial assault in an attempt to either bring Britain to “peace” terms or destroy the Royal Air Force as a prelude to Operation Sea Lion, the invasion of southeastern England.
Britain’s hope, after its army had been routed in France and Belgium, rested on “The Few”—a cadre of British, Commonwealth, American, and other émigré fighter pilots of the RAF. The man leading Fighter Command was a resolute, embattled air marshal nicknamed “Stuffy,” who fought Winston Churchill and nearly every other minister and general in a variety of political campaigns during the prewar years. His goal was to achieve a strategy focused on radar detection, safe and reliable ground-to-ground (as well as ground-to-air) communication, and high-performance, single-seat, monoplane fighters—the Hurricane and the Spitfire.
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