[.ca] Battle Of Britain (ISBN 0393322971)

From Amazon.com:
The Battle of Britain, Winston Churchill famously remarked, was the "finest hour" of the Royal Air Force, which battled Hitler's Luftwaffe in the skies above England for a few tense weeks. That storied episode, which historian Richard Overy deems a stalemate rather than a decisive triumph, has been layered with legends, one being that the RAF's determined resistance was the key factor in repelling an impending Nazi invasion. It now appears that that was never a real possibility. Another legend was that the RAF was badly outnumbered and outgunned. In fact, as Overy details, the German and British air forces were fairly evenly matched, and the RAF sustained fewer losses than it delivered. Overy's slender, well-written study of the Battle of Britain celebrates the very real accomplishments of the RAF and, its revisionism aside, acknowledges that the Battle of Britain was a true turning point in the history of World War II. Overy holds that one of its most important results was to lead influential Americans to urge that the United States take Britain's side, a fact that would soon be realized. More important, though, the Battle of Britain kept England in the war at a time when many politicians and citizens sought some accommodation with the Nazi regime. It galvanized popular opposition to Hitler, replacing uncertainties and disagreements with "a greater sense of purpose and a more united people." --Gregory McNamee

The Rest of the Story !:
Movies, books and articles have narrated the Battle of Britain. Most limited their narrative to the heroic efforts of the RAF pilots, crews and commanders. Richard Overy gives the _rest of the story_ in this book providing insight into the total picture. He notes that for the British people _The Battle_ meant one thing, the Battle of Britain which was the epic contest between the British and German air forces in the late summer and autumn of 1940. Chapter 1 observes that during the 1930s, Britain envisioned Germany delivering an airborne _knock-out blow_ for which there was no defense. In response, between 1937 through 1939,millions were spent on an airborne defensive shield and an expanded Bomber Command if required for retaliation. The German strategy was to use air power in combined operations with the army to impose a decisive defeat of enemy ground forces. Britain was unprepared to meet this type of warfare. Therefore when France was attacked, Britain could supply little effective air support to aid the French. At this point, the British were not united. The author narrates the policy debates over whether to appease or fight Germany. However, the fall of France and Dunkirk shocked the country and British morale was revived to fight on. Hitler, the author notes, regarded invasion as _very hazardous_ and hoped for a political settlement. Hitler made a peace offer in a July 1940 speech which Britain promptly rejected in a radio address. Britain now faced the air power type of conflict it had been preparing for since the 1930s. Chapter 2 evaluates the two forces noting that _The military confrontation in the autumn of 1940 became a test of strength between two rival air forces._ The text notes both armies trained for the coming battle; but _....none of this mattered as long as the German air Force had not won mastery of the air over southern Britain._ Command structures are described noting that Herman Goering was both air minister and air force commander while the British had an Air Minister, Sir Archibald Sinclair, with separate commanders for fighters and for bombers. To Sir Hugh Dowding, of Fighter Command, fell the task of creating an effective defense shield. The author writes _Sinclair epitomized that British elite of dignified public servants so much despised and ridiculed in German propaganda. Goering, on the hand, was everything Sinclair was not._ The text notes that _on 10 August 1940, The German single-engine fighters assigned to the battle over Britain was 1011, slightly fewer than Fighter Command_ thus destroying an enduring myth of the few against the many. The book compares fighter production, performance and armament noting that early in the battle there was rough parity in fighter number, but in the last weeks the British had the edge. Another myth is the shortage of trained RAF fighter pilots. The number of RAF pilots increased by one third between June and August 1940. The Germans could cope with pilot shortages because of a lower loss rate. The author writes _If Fighter command were the _few_, German pilots were fewer._ The British air defense system, set up to counter the enemy bombing offensive, is described and it was adjusted in the summer of 1940 to meet an invasion threat. Coastal Command played a difficult, costly and critical role twice daily conducting reconnaissance of German controlled ports. Bomber Commands role was to wear down German resistance by bombardment of vital objectives. The author notes that _The one field of battle where British preparations proved at least equal to the task in 1940 was fighter defense and it was for that reason alone that German air fleets concentrated on destroying Fighter Command_ using fighter sweeps in a war of attrition. German daylight bombing of London began on 7 September when 350 bombers raided the east dock area and the text notes _The air battles in the week between 7 September and 15 September were decisive in turning the tide of the battle. During that week the German Air force lost 298 aircraft. Fighter Command lost 120, against 99 enemy fighters._ Another myth that Richard Overy debunks is that Hitler never seriously planned an invasion,writing that _There need be no doubt that under the right circumstances Hitler was serious about invading Britain in 1940...._ but that by the end of September Hitler concluded that air superiority had not been achieved and indefinitely postponed an invasion. Lacking daylight bombing success, the Germans shifted to night bombing thereby creating a problem as aircraft were very difficult to shoot down at night from the air or from the ground until new detection equipment was developed. Overy states that though the Germans never formally adopted terror bombing, the tactics they employed caused widespread civilian casualties resulting in the death of 40,000 people during the Battle of Britain and the Blitz. The Battle of Britain did not seriously weaken Germany and her allies, but the contest was not a draw. German air fleets did not gain air supremacy over southern Britain. The author observes that _In a great many respects, however, the two forces were remarkably matched. Both commanded a small group of committed, highly trained and courageous pilots, both forces responded with considerable tactical ingenuity to sudden changes of direction in the course of the battle; both exploited fighter aircraft at the cutting edge of aviation technology; both forces fought the battle with operations commanders of real distinction._ Finally, this was not a traditional battle in that it did not have a clear-cut beginning nor a defined ending. However, the author concludes that like Trafalgar, the Battle of Britain was critical to the British people in that an invasion scare subsided and the nation could now get on with the task of winning the war.

Short, sweet and to the point.:
Richard Overy's "The Battle of Britain: The Myth and the Reality" is a truly outstanding and supremely laconic volume. In a mere 177 pages, Overy examines the image of the Battle of Britain as it has been passed down to us today and compares that image to long-available, but commonly widely-scattered facts. One of Overy's major points centers on the perception of the battle and British public reaction to it. We have been handed down an image of a unified, defiant Britain standing firm before the onslaught. Overy reveals a divided, in some senses baffled and relatively numb British public which gave its Government cause for concern (and not a few flights of irrational fancy). Of Churchill's famous speech about "The Few" Overy points out the reference was a small and offhand portion of a speech largely devoted to other matters which was not regarded as one of Churchill's better oratories at the time. Overy also shows how selection of the parameters of the battle in terms of time and geography distort historical perception to reinforce the myth of Fighter Command being severely outnumbered. He shows the British and German single-engine fighter counts (twin-engine fighters having been rapidly proven outclassed and irrelevant to the air superiority battle) started roughly even and subsequently diverged steadily in favor of the British. Overy illustrates "The Few" were not so few in comparison to their equally few German opponents, and that the numbers of the British "Few" steadily rose through the battle, while those of the Luftwaffe steadily fell. The idea that Fighter Command was nearly knocked about by attacks on its bases, is dispelled by the revelation of just how few British aircraft were destroyed on the ground, how light casualties on the ground were, and how quickly fields were restored to operation. Overy also reveals that the hardest hit bases were actually forward bases to support the Battle of France, not bases integral to Fighter Command's Air Defense of Great Britain. Overy also acknowledges the role of ULTRA in the Battle of Britain alongside that of radar, the Observer Corps and radio listening posts in the background of which it is often lost. As for the role of the battle in preventing an invasion (Operation Sea Lion) Overy raises the important point that even had the Luftwaffe forced Fighter Command back from SE England, it lacked the range to keep pushing it back or to stop the Royal Navy from fatally interfering with any landing attempt. Too many analyses of Sea Lion assume control of the air meant ipso facto control of the sea and forget that control of the air was merely a prelude to contesting control of the sea by air or surface forces. The Luftwaffe's ability to stop a Royal Navy intervention against a German cross-Channel landing attempt was by no means certain, particularly after failing to stop the more-vulnerable Dunkirk exodus. Overy's book is a quick, five-star, one-afternoon primer for serious students of the Battle of Britain's import. It is not a detailed tactical description of dogfights. Nor is it an effort at debunking everything known about the Battle of Britain. Rather, it is a consolidation of facts usually brought out in isolation into a single coherent tapestry that reveals a somewhat different picture than we're used to seeing. And despite substantial myth-busting, Overy's conclusion is that the Battle of Britain was a seminal moment in the war...if not in the way and for the reasons we have commonly believed. I highly recommend this very mature and realistic look at the Battle of Britain.

Short and to the point: well done.:
This book is not a dramatic retelling of the battle. It is concerned with what went on behind the scenes. It discusses the reasoning of the German commanders concerning an invasion of England and their plans behind the air attack. It's pretty enlightening to see how each side was pretty mistaken about what the other side thought or would do. There are quite a bit of authorities quoted for the author's premises. The newest thing to me was the fact that not all Brits pulled together about resisting the German aggression. The documentation about that reads about like the way people do now in both Britain and the U.S. This is an inside look at the entire campaign of the Battle of Britain and the events leading up to it. There are some things that were new to me and I think would be new to most readers. It's a good writing job and a good research job.

Facts and figures counter the myths:
This little -- less than 140 pages of large type and wide margins -- book is less 'revisionist' than its subtitle might lead you to expect. Based largely, it seems, on reports and statistics from government archives, Overy in fact deflates many of the recent revisionist interpretations of the Battle of Britain. At the same time, arguing as Thomas Fleming does in 'The New Dealers' War' that 'memory is not history,' Overy also challenges the rose-colored conventional wisdom that has accreted around the Battle in the years and decades since. The Battle of Britain, Overy argues, had no clear beginning and no clear end; the dates chosen by the government seem purely arbitrary. By and large, neither the British public nor the British leadership was aware they were fighting an epic battle while it was going on. There was no clear winner, and it was not in any sense a turning point in the war. '\oT\che Battle of Britain did not seriously weaken Germany and her allies, nor did it much reduce the scale of the threat facing Britain (and the Commonwealth) in 1940/41 ...' (p. 113). At the same time, however, the battle was not a draw: the failure of the German air force to knock out the RAF or terror-bomb the population into capitulation directly deterred or prevented Hitler's planned Operation Sealion, the invasion of southern England. Countering the 'revisionists,' Overy argues that Sealion was a real strategic plan, not a diversion to cover for the invasion of the Soviet Union. Similarly, he shows that the Nazi shift from targeting RAF bases and personnel to deliberate bombing of civilian targets was not Hitler's vengeance-crazed demand following the Allied bombing of Berlin, but was actually part of the Sealion strategic plan, and happened well *before* bombs fell on the German capital. One of the most interesting aspects of this study is Overy's discussion, not only of the myths that have grown up since the end of the Battle of Britain, but also the myths that both sides were laboring under while the Battle was being fought. The RAF, for example, consistently overestimated -- in a huge way -- the number of enemy pilots and planes they faced (contrary to the modern myth of 'the Few,' RAF fighter pilots outnumbered their German counterparts throughout the Battle). For their part, German planners grossly exaggerated the RAF's losses of planes and pilots, and overestimated the damage they had caused to Britain's airfields and industrial production. In all, Overy rejects modern arguments that Britain would have been better off had she negotiated peace before the Battle and the Blitz began. Overy's short essay demonstrates that Churchill was right when he stated that although it might not always have been clear what Britain was fighting for, if the British were to stop fighting, they (and the world) would soon find out.

A tad dry, but dispels the myths nonetheless:
I found The Battle of Britain: The Myth and the Reality to be a good, detailed overview of the events that transpired in Britain from August-October, 1941. What the book lacks is much in the way of personal details. The pilots who served in the RAF, and the challenge they faced, aren't covered in much detail. Rather, we're given statistics about how many were shot down during such and such a time and how many planes Britain was able to produce during the conflict. The author, Richard Overy, makes it quite clear, however, that he's not attempting to tell the comprehensive story of the Battle. Rather, he simply wants to dispel the myths surrounding this battle. "The few" to whom Winston Churchill attributed so much national gratitude, were actually fairly evenly matched with their enemy, the Nazi Luftwaffe. Overy doesn't dispel the notion that the British defense of their homeland was any less valiant, but he does make certain to point out discrepancies between the reality and the mythical proportions that the Battle of Britain have acquired in the years since the Blitz. In summary, if you're looking for a good, honest description of the Battle of Britain, this book will meet your needs. For a more detailed description of the events and people involved, you will have to find a more comprehensive book.