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02:00On the 1st of April 1918, the Royal Naval Air Service and Royal Flying Corps were merged to form the
02:06Royal Air Force.
02:09It was the world's first independent air arm.
02:15But after the war, it was swiftly run down.
02:18By 1922, there were only three fighter squadrons available for home defence.
02:24It was then planned to build a force of 52 squadrons for the air defence of Great Britain, of which
02:30one-third would be fighters.
02:31The prevailing mood of world disarmament caused this to be put back to 1936.
02:38Matters changed radically in January 1933, when Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany.
02:45In March 1935, he revealed the existence of the Luftwaffe, boasting that it was already as strong as the RAF.
03:00The British government replied by rushing through expansion plans for the RAF.
03:08A year later, the air defence of Great Britain was reorganised into four separate commands.
03:13Fighter, bomber, coastal and training.
03:18Fighter Command's first commander-in-chief was Air Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding.
03:23Highly respected, but austere, he was nicknamed Stuffy by his men.
03:33When Dowding took over, Fighter Command had only 16 squadrons, each of 12 aircraft, and just over 200 pilots.
03:42It was equipped with biplanes, like the Hawker Fury and the Hawker Demon.
03:46These lacked the speed and the necessary early warning to engage bombers before they struck their target.
03:54But Dowding inherited and encouraged two vital technical developments, which would transform his command.
04:05Radar, a contraction of radio detection and ranging, enabled approaching aircraft to be detected by reflecting radio waves off them.
04:14The chain of stations was rapidly built along England's south coast.
04:21And the all-metal frame monoplane fighter, capable of significantly higher speeds than the traditional biplane, was introduced.
04:29The first was the Hawker Hurricane, designed by Sidney Camp.
04:36The other was R.J. Mitchell's Supermarine Spitfire.
04:43By the outbreak of war, in 1939, most of Dowding's aircraft were the new Spitfire and Hurricane.
04:51Furthermore, he had doubled the strength of his command.
04:58The backbone of his pilots were the regular officers, who had been trained at the RAF's academy at Cranwell.
05:07They were augmented by pilots on short service commissions, which bound them to four years active service, followed by ten
05:13on the reserve.
05:14Many came from the Dominions, like New Zealander, Al Deer, who would become one of the leading aces.
05:22And another ace, South African's Sailor Milan, who got his nickname because he'd been a merchant seaman before joining the
05:29RAF.
05:34There were also the non-commissioned pilots, who made up 25% of each squadron's aircrew.
05:46The regular squadrons were supported by the part-time flyers of the RAF Volunteer Reserve.
05:56And these were backed up by the Royal Auxiliary Air Force Squadrons, which also did most of their flying at
06:02weekends.
06:04The romance of the air was at its height in the 1930s, with ever-longer pioneering flights.
06:10But like Christopher Foxley Norris and his friend Richard Hillary, most of the weekend flyers played down their enthusiasm.
06:18For example, he and I both joined the Oxford University Air Squadron, but we certainly didn't do it so that
06:24we could become better pilots.
06:26We did it to enjoy ourselves.
06:32Despite this modesty, most of them knew that they were the heirs of the aces of World War I.
06:39And their confidence was high.
06:42We had a wonderful aeroplane, armour plating at the back, a great big engine in front,
06:49and was sitting on a parachute, and with eight machine guns.
06:54So you really were a modern knight, and prepared to take on anything.
07:01James Sanders would become one of the aces of the Battle of Brickham.
07:05But in the summer of 1939, it was still an open question as to how the young bloods of fighter
07:10command
07:11would match up to actual combat.
07:17Their test was soon upon them.
07:26On the 1st of September, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland.
07:36Two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany,
07:40and a British expeditionary force began to cross the English Channel to support the French Army.
07:48With it went the Royal Air Force, including four Fighter Command Hurricane Squadrons.
07:54This left Hugh Dowding, Fighter Command's chief, with a total of 33 squadrons for the defence of Britain.
08:03Three were equipped with the Bristol Blenheim, which was fundamentally a bomber,
08:07and no match for modern monoplane fighters.
08:14Another three squadrons had the obsolescent Gloucester Gladiator,
08:18but the remainder had hurricanes or spitfires.
08:26During the phony war, which followed the fall of Poland,
08:29Fighter Command's main task was to protect shipping on Britain's east coast,
08:33and the Royal Navy in its anchorages at Scarpa Flow and Rosythe.
08:38It was during a German attack on Rosythe, on the 16th of October, 1939,
08:43that the command had its first successes of the war.
08:49Hurricanes shot down two Heinkel He-111 bombers.
08:57The fighter squadrons in France also had some success against German reconnaissance aircraft.
09:06But the onset of winter, which was exceptionally severe,
09:10put a break on the air operations of both sides.
09:20With the coming of spring, the war hotted up once more.
09:23Germany invaded Norway and Denmark in April 1940.
09:30Fighter Command sent a squadron of gladiators to Norway,
09:33but all were lost to German air attack in just a couple of days,
09:37as they attempted to operate from a frozen lake.
09:45Dowding had also been forced to send a further six squadrons to France by May 1940.
09:51And when the Germans did attack,
09:53four more hurricane squadrons immediately deployed to France.
10:01They were soon giving a good account of themselves,
10:04but they were facing overwhelming odds,
10:06and another 32 hurricanes were also sent out.
10:13As the German blitzkrieg swept across France,
10:17the French pleaded for yet more fighters.
10:21But Dowding was deeply concerned that his resources for defending Britain were becoming too thin.
10:27and persuaded the war cabinet that no more fighter squadrons should be sent to France.
10:33Within two weeks, the Germans succeeded in trapping the British Expeditionary Force,
10:38together with substantial numbers of French and Belgian troops,
10:41in a pocket around the port of Dunkirk.
10:47Hermann Göring boasted that his Luftwaffe would destroy them on its own.
10:52The German airmen did their best.
11:04But they could not prevent 340,000 Allied troops being brought back to Britain.
11:14Much of the credit for the miracle of Dunkirk must go to Fighter Command,
11:19whose pilots fought valiantly to keep the Luftwaffe off the rescue ships.
11:27One pilot who saw his first combat during this battle was 30-year-old Douglas Bader.
11:32He had graduated from Cranwell a decade earlier.
11:36Soon afterwards, he suffered an horrific air crash,
11:40which resulted in the amputation of both his legs, forcing him to leave the RAF.
11:48But sheer determination got Bader past fit to fly in early 1940,
11:53and he quickly justified himself, achieving his first kill, an ME109, over Dunkirk.
12:00He must have been a beginner like myself,
12:02because he stayed flying absolutely straight and never while I shot him down, you know, without moving.
12:06We didn't have air superiority, but we had enough.
12:10The Germans had left Dunkirk and went on to Paris and so on,
12:14which was a great mistake of theirs, really.
12:16We lost quite a lot of aeroplanes at Dunkirk and some jolly good pilots.
12:20Quite a lot of aeroplanes was over 400, as well as 153 jolly good pilots.
12:28There were losses Dowding could ill afford.
12:36He knew that the crucial battle, that for domination of England's skies, was about to take place.
12:42If he lost it, German invasion appeared inevitable.
12:50Across the English Channel, the Luftwaffe could marshal over 1,100 medium bombers.
12:57Some 320 Junkers Ju-87 Stuka dive bombers.
13:06800 ME109 single-engine fighters.
13:15And 250 twin-engine ME110 fighters.
13:23Also within range of Britain were a further 150 bombers and ME110s, based in Norway and Denmark.
13:32This armada was flown by crews who had been bloodied in the Spanish Civil War and honed their combat skills
13:39in Poland.
13:47To oppose them, Dowding had approximately 800 fighters, but only his 700 Spitfires and Hurricanes really counted.
13:55If they were to be fully effective, efficient command, control and communications were essential.
14:06The number 10 group covered south-west England.
14:07Dowding had organised his force in four groups.
14:11Number 10 group covered south-west England.
14:14Its commander, South African Sir Quintin Brand, had been one of the pilots who had made the first flight from
14:19London to Cape Town in 1920.
14:26New Zealander Keith Park's number 11 group was responsible for south-east England, the most critical sector.
14:33Park had been Dowding's senior staff officer, and the commander-in-chief had every confidence in him.
14:44Based in East Anglia, and the Midlands number 12 group provided depth to the frontline defences.
14:50Trafford Lee Mallory, the group commander, had a background of air cooperation with ground forces.
15:00Finally, Richard Saul's number 13 group covered the north of England and southern Scotland.
15:10Dowding was heavily reliant on the chain of radar stations covering the south and east coasts for early warning of
15:16the approach of hostile aircraft.
15:19This home chain system sent the information of the build-up of enemy raids direct to the filter room at
15:25Headquarters Fighter Command at Bentley Priory, on the north-west outskirts of London.
15:33Here, the direction and strength of the raids were identified, and the information passed simultaneously to the operations rooms at
15:40Bentley Priory, the group HQs, and the sector HQs within each group.
15:46Once the raiders had crossed the English coast, their progress was monitored by the observer corps, which was made up
15:52of civilian volunteers.
15:55The group HQs decided which squadrons to scramble, while the sector ops rooms within each group controlled the fighters in
16:03the air, guiding them on to the enemy formations.
16:10Two other elements played an important part in the British air defences.
16:13The anti-aircraft command controlled ground-based air defence weapons, while RAF Balloon Command manned the barrage balloons, which were
16:24designed to deter low-level attack.
16:31For many, the Spitfire has come to symbolise fighter command in the Battle of Britain.
16:42Pilots like former ace Brian Kinkum found it a delight to fly.
16:53The Spitfire was reckoned a good match for the German ME 109, and was used to attack these bomber escorts.
17:03The more numerous, but less glamorous Hurricane also had its strengths.
17:08We, the Hurricane pilots, knew we could out-turn by out-turning it, going round in a smaller circle.
17:15If you both were turning, he was trying to shoot you down, given a few turns, and you were in
17:21a position to shoot at him.
17:23Geoffrey Page and his companions tended to concentrate on shooting down the enemy bombers.
17:28One British weakness was tactics, something which some pilots had already identified.
17:34The basic RAF formation was the three-plane VIC.
17:38Attacks were carried out as drills laid down in the manual of air fighting.
17:42This was in contrast to the Luftwaffe, which put its greater combat experience to good use in developing the Finger
17:494 formation.
17:50This provided much more flexibility and better protection against being jumped by hostile fighters.
17:59Dowding had no worries over fighter production, which had recently been stepped up.
18:08But he was deeply concerned about his slender reserves of trained pilots.
18:16Although the training organisation was expanded in July 1940 to produce 115 instead of 39 fighter pilots every two weeks,
18:25it would take time for his command to benefit.
18:29Dowding's worries remained acute, especially as casualties started to rise.
18:35In addition to calling up all available reserves, more pilots were brought in from overseas.
18:40Among them the combat experienced Polish pilots, who had escaped to Britain having already engaged the Luftwaffe twice,
18:48over their home country as well as France, and trained pilots from France and Czechoslovakia.
18:54The RAF even recruited a few American volunteers.
19:00However good the pilots and their machines, they were totally reliant on their ground crews,
19:05as Bob Stanford Tuck, another Battle of Britain ace, later acknowledged.
19:10On occasions you'd land on a hot, terribly hot day, and you'd taxi in, switch off, jump out,
19:16and they'd swarm onto the thing, open up all the cowlings, the engine fitter would be at it,
19:22quickly checking this, refueling.
19:24They'd be shoveling ammunition into the aircraft as hard as they could go.
19:28The radio operator would be there with the side flap open, working on the radio,
19:33all working like absolute beaver.
19:40The ground crews took pride in the speed they could turn the aircraft round.
19:45One young fitter was interviewed after the battle by the BBC.
19:50The other part of it, from a squadron landing, to a squadron being airborne again,
19:56I think it was actually, officially in the end, done in seven minutes,
20:01from the time the first one touched down to the last one's airborne.
20:08The Battle of Britain officially began on the 10th of July, 1940.
20:18During the first month of fighting, the Luftwaffe tried to tempt the RAF out over the channel by attacking convoys.
20:36Douding refused to rise to the bit, although there were some fierce clashes,
20:41just off the English south coast, particularly around the port of Dover.
20:46The fierceness of the battles can be judged from this contemporary radio report
20:50about the interception of a Stuker attack.
20:52Now the British fighters are coming up.
20:54Here they come, they come, an absolute steep dive.
20:56You can see their bombs actually leave the machines and come into the water.
21:00There's one coming down in flames, coming down this long streak,
21:02coming down completely out of control, a long streak of smoke.
21:05There's a spike going on, you can hear the little rattles of the machine gun bullets.
21:08Oh, we've just hit a Messerschmitt. Oh, that was beautiful.
21:10He's coming right down now. I think definitely that's the first one.
21:14Oh, boy, I've never seen anything that good in there.
21:17Oh, yeah.
21:22On the 12th of August, Goering began to mount his main assault.
21:32The primary targets were radar stations and forward airfields.
21:36Luckily for Douding, the attacks on the radars were not sustained for long,
21:40and most survived.
21:45Three days later came what Goering called Adler Tag, or Eagle Day.
21:51This massive assault was designed to destroy the RAF once and for all.
22:02The Luftwaffe flew nearly 1,500 sorties.
22:05It was handicapped by the fact that its fighters only had fuel for a few minutes' combat over England.
22:11Soon it was losing between two and three times as many aircraft as the British.
22:1545 to 13 on Adler Tag alone.
22:20The 18th of August was a crisis day.
22:23The Germans attacked a number of the crucial sector headquarters airfields.
22:27Command and control was severely disrupted.
22:30The RAF lost 34 precious aircraft to the Luftwaffe's 71.
22:35But despite their losses, the Germans were still sure that their superior numbers and experience must prevail,
22:41as this Nazi newsreel makes clear.
22:44Command and control.
22:46Their chain is no longer running.
22:48That's how it goes day and night and hours and hours.
22:51The German Luftwaffe holds no longer running.
22:59Given this pressure, could fighter command hold out?
23:13During the perfect summer days of late August 1940, the skies above southern England were full of contrails as the
23:20grim battle went on.
23:29The RAF crews were constantly in action.
23:34And always outnumbered.
23:38Aces, Roland Beaumont and Dennis David describe the heroic struggle.
23:43You're never going to break up a big formation with seven hurricanes.
23:47You're not going to break up a hundred by just coming in behind them.
23:50All you'll do is pick off one or two.
23:52But if you attack them from the front, there's a good chance you'll make the formations break to avoid you.
23:58And then after that, you can get back in and start to try to attack individual airplanes.
24:06There wasn't time for bloody tactics.
24:09Our tactics were to attack the enemy as quickly as possible.
24:14You got straight into a melee and it was every man for himself.
24:19I sometimes got very close and had German oil all over my windshield.
24:26Those on the ground could only watch and hope.
24:28On the 20th of August, Winston Churchill summed up what everyone was thinking.
24:33Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.
24:44The few lived with the constant fear of death, particularly by burning.
24:49The temperature in the cockpit, they estimate, goes from about a comfortable room temperature up to 3,000 degrees centigrade
24:59in 10 seconds,
25:01where water boils at 100 degrees centigrade.
25:04So if you're not out in under 10 seconds, you're a dead mutton.
25:10The pilots were becoming exhausted by the constant stress.
25:18Throughout the hours of daylight, they were on standby, usually waiting in or just outside the dispersal hut close to
25:25their aircraft.
25:29Although they tried not to show it, everyone was keyed up for the ring of the telephone.
25:38It could be a routine administrative query or the order to scramble.
25:51Sometimes, when the German pressure was intense, the pilots had to wait in their cockpits.
25:58Occasionally, a squadron would be granted a 24-hour standout, which usually ran from midday to noon on the following
26:05day.
26:06Some pilots dashed up to the fleshpots in London.
26:10But many were content just to have a few beers at their local hotel or pub.
26:20When they were on duty, the pilots often flew up to five or six sorties per day.
26:38Once in the air, the adrenaline would race, as they listened out on their radios to the ground controllers' instructions.
26:44Guiding them onto the approaching German planes.
26:50He was helped by the plotters, who marked the progress of the raid on a giant map book.
26:57As a leading ace Johnny Johnson describes, pilots tried to keep detached from the reality of what they were doing.
27:04I'd never thought about the man in the machine killing him.
27:08I just wanted to shoot that thing down with a black cross on it.
27:35Inevitably, at the end of a sortie, pilots would be missing.
27:39It's very hard for people to realise today that you sit down to breakfast with somebody,
27:43and he's never seen again after that meal.
27:47And it was a terrible loss, really.
27:49But so much so that, as to an individual, I stopped making friends who were other pilots.
27:59On the 24th of August, the Luftwaffe increased the fighter escorts for its bombers and mounted a renewed assault on
28:06fighter command's airfields, especially those of number 11 group.
28:12With his squadrons suffering heavy losses and the surviving pilots becoming exhausted, Keith Park was increasingly concerned that his group
28:19might disintegrate.
28:21To help him, Dowding began to replace some of Park's depleted squadrons with ones from other groups.
28:26But as Lawrence Thurgood later described, the standard of the newer pilots was inevitably dropping.
28:33The total number of hours I'd got in on Hurricanes was just 20 hours.
28:38And we were being called on to go into squadrons with inadequate training on the gunnery side,
28:44which, after all, was the absolute key to the whole business, to shoot.
28:50A friend of mine carried out two attacks on an enemy bomber with his guns at safe.
28:58That means they wouldn't fire anyway.
29:01But he just didn't realise that his guns weren't working because he didn't know what to expect.
29:06He thought, my, they are very silent, these guns.
29:12It looked as if fighter command must eventually be ground down in defeat.
29:16But then on the 7th of September, the Luftwaffe dramatically changed tactics.
29:22Two weeks earlier, one or more German bomber crews had inadvertently bombed London.
29:28The following night, RAF Bomber Command made a retaliatory attack on Berlin.
29:35Although it caused little damage, Hitler ordered attacks on London by day and by night.
29:50Keith Park later recalled this critical moment in the battle.
29:58The night they turned their bombers on to the city of London and set it alight,
30:05I flew over the city in my hurricane and I looked down at the lower Thames, which was well alight
30:14from all the petrol tanks, and I said, thank God.
30:17Because I knew that once they'd started on bombing London, I felt certain they'd keep on bombing the Thames and
30:28leave my eardrums free to be reconstructed.
30:35It was feared that this change meant that German invasion was imminent.
30:39And that same evening of the 7th of September, the code word Cromwell was issued, putting all defending forces on
30:46heightened alert.
30:47But in reality, Hitler was beginning to acknowledge that his Luftwaffe was not winning the Battle of Britain.
30:53On the 10th of September, he postponed his projected invasion for two weeks.
31:02Goering, however, was determined to make one last all-out effort to crush fighter command.
31:10On the 15th of September, he launched another massive attack on London, which was designed to get the RAF's remaining
31:17fighters into the air so that he could destroy them.
31:20On the 15th of September, he began to make one last all-out effort.
31:29Dowding's men rose up to meet the challenge.
31:42Virtually every aircraft that fighter command possessed was flung into the assault.
31:50One of the most extraordinary kills that day was made by Ray Holmes, who had already downed two Germans when
31:56he saw bombers streaking low over the capital.
32:00There was St Paul's Cathedral, there was St Buckingham Palace and all these places, and he was on a dead
32:05straight line for all these places.
32:07And as far as I was concerned, he wasn't going to get there.
32:15As I got within firing range, about 400 yards, I opened fire and immediately the guns spluttered and got nothing
32:24left.
32:29And I knew now that the only way of getting it chopped down was to take his tail plane off.
32:35His tail plane was looking so fragile there, and to me it looked like a model aeroplane, as if you
32:40could just chop it.
32:41And I thought my wing at that speed would go right through his tail and take the tail off.
32:49Instead of taking the piece of the tail off that I wanted to take off, he took the whole of
32:53the twin tail section.
32:55This is the Dornier coming down. This is the fuselage, with the wingtips missing and the tail missing.
33:04And this is the tail, and they both came down together and landed on Victoria Station.
33:12Amazingly, a cameraman filmed the last moments of Holmes' kill.
33:21The Luftwaffe lost 60 aircraft, while the RAF lost exactly half as many.
33:27There could be no sure of proof that Goering had failed.
33:30And two days later, Hitler ordered an indefinite postponement of his invasion of Britain.
33:38The Battle of Britain rumbled on until the end of October.
33:41By then, the emphasis of the German assault had switched to attacks by night on Britain's cities and towns.
33:48This blitz would last until May 1941.
33:59In the aftermath of the Battle of Britain, Hugh Dowding retired.
34:03Many of the few who now called themselves Dowding's Chicks, because of the way he had cared for them,
34:08felt that he was not given the recognition that he deserved for his leadership in one of the most decisive
34:13conflicts in history.
34:16Nevertheless, in 1943, he was ennobled as Baron Dowding of Bentley Priory.
34:24During the night assault on Britain's cities, Fighter Command had to develop new defensive skills.
34:33These were based on the development of airborne interception radar.
34:43Blenheims, and then the faster and more manoeuvrable Bristol Bowfighter, were used for this role.
34:54The Bowfighter had specifically been designed as a night fighter, although it went on to act as an escort fighter
35:01and ground attack aircraft.
35:04During 1942, the even more versatile and fast Mosquito would be adapted for this role.
35:12Tracking down enemy bombers and engaging them required the closest coordination between the pilot and his navigator, who operated the
35:20radar.
35:212 o'clock, 15 all the time, steady. Range coming down to about 800 feet, overtaking about 5 miles an
35:28hour.
35:28Have a look with the glasses.
35:30Where is he?
35:31Right above there, about 50 degrees at 1 o'clock.
35:35You see him? We're right below him.
35:36Yes, I see him. Yes, hold on.
35:48Sholto Douglas, a distinguished World War One scout pilot, succeeded Dowding as Commander-in-Chief of Fighter Command.
35:58Douglas believed that the time had come to go over to the attack.
36:03His fighters began to mount two types of operation over occupied Europe.
36:08Rhubarbs, sweeps by small groups of fighters on their own, and circuses, groups of day bombers escorted by fighters.
36:28Douglas made no secret of his tactics.
36:32The aim was to draw German fighters from their airfields in northern France, and destroy them in the air.
36:38For the first six months of 1941, these operations were pursued sparingly, with equal loss rates for either side.
36:52But when the Germans invaded Russia in June 1941, the tempo was stepped up, so as to keep as much
36:59as possible of the Luftwaffe tied down in the west.
37:02This worked well, with experienced pilots being transferred from the eastern front to make good losses in the west.
37:09But the rhubarbs and circuses were costly.
37:13One reason was that the RAF fighters were now operating over hostile territory.
37:16Like their Luftwaffe adversaries the previous summer, they were limited by fuel in the amount of time that they could
37:23spend in combat.
37:25The second reason was that the Germans had introduced a formidable new fighter, the Focke-Wulf FW 190,
37:32which far outclassed the standard Fighter Command Spitfire II.
37:40Douglas Bader, who was now leading a wing on cross-channel sweeps, explained how the FW 190 was counted.
37:47Now, what they did then, the British manufacturers, they engined up the Spitfire,
37:53and it was a Spitfire 9.
37:56And the Spitfire 9 reigned supreme for the rest of the war.
37:59It was better than the 190 that I'd climbed, that I did everything.
38:18With his tin legs and 22 confirmed victories to his credit, Bader himself thought he was indestructible.
38:26But while leading his wing over Lille in northern France in a rhubarb operation on the 9th of August 1941,
38:32he finally fell victim to an FW 190.
38:46Bader managed to bail out, and was entertained by German fighter ace Adolf Gallant, before being imprisoned for the rest
38:53of the war.
38:58During the summer of 1941 and into 1942, Fighter Command Sweeps was stepped up to help the Russians.
39:09Again, they proved expensive, especially in the air battles accompanying the disastrous Dieppe Raid in August 1942,
39:16the attempt by largely Canadian forces to land at this French channel port.
39:24The RAF hoped to inflict a significant defeat on the Luftwaffe,
39:28but the Germans shot down twice as many Allied planes as they lost themselves.
39:33Some pilots were rescued by the ships involved in the raid.
39:44During the spring of 1943, planning for the cross-channel invasion of France got underway.
39:51Fighter Command, which had already had a number of squadrons drawn off for posting abroad, faced a fundamental reorganization.
39:59More of its squadrons were handed over to 2nd Tactical Air Force, which had been set up to provide direct
40:05support for the Allied invasion forces.
40:08And the remainder of Fighter Command was renamed Air Defence of Great Britain.
40:13Both forces were placed under Sir Trafford Leigh Mallory.
40:19The Tactical Air Force's role was strictly offensive, and it took over Fighter Command's operations over northern France,
40:26while ADGB remained purely defensive.
40:33One of its tasks was to counter German reconnaissance aircraft, trying to monitor the invasion preparations.
40:46Another was to intercept bombers mounting lightning raids.
40:53The ADGB's roles appeared unglamorous, compared to those that Fighter Command had enjoyed.
40:58But its men were soon to be put to the test in what became, in effect, another Battle of Britain.
41:05For the Germans were about to launch another blitz.
41:18By the early summer of 1944, what Hitler called his miracle weapons, which he was certain could tip the balance
41:25of war back in Germany's favour, were finally ready for action.
41:30One of these was the V-1 Flying Bomb, which carried an 1800-pound warhead and flew at over 400
41:37miles per hour.
41:39The Allies had become aware of the V-1 over a year earlier, and in August 1943 had launched a
41:44bombing raid against the development centre at Pinamunda on the Baltic coast,
41:48which set back the programme by several months.
41:52They also identified and attacked the V-1 launch sites, which the Germans were building in northern France.
42:02However, it was not enough.
42:09On the 13th of June 1944, the week after the Allied landings in Normandy, the first V-1s were launched
42:16against England.
42:22Faced with this new threat, the air defence of Great Britain had swiftly to develop tactics for countering the V
42:29-1s.
42:31Fighters would be scrambled as soon as the flying bombs were spotted approaching the coast, and their pilots soon became
42:36adept at shooting them down.
42:39But as Roland Beaumont describes, this was not the only way of bringing down a V-1.
42:45Another method, which was come across by accident, was tipping the V-1 over by the wing tip of the
42:54fighter.
42:55And this happened, in my own case, when I'd used up my ammunition on one V-1, saw another one,
43:02and decided to try and do something about it.
43:05And the method was to get your wing tip close underneath the wing tip of the V-1, but not
43:12touching it,
43:13and then gradually raise your own wing to raise the air flow over it to affect the gyro stabilisation of
43:22the V-1.
43:39A significant addition to the defences against the V-1 was the first jet to enter RAF service, the Gloucester
43:46Meteor, which made its operational debut on the 12th of July.
43:52Although the first meteors only flew at an equivalent speed to the V-1, their rapid rate of climb made
43:58it easy to intercept the flying bombs.
44:06Another measure taken was to deploy anti-aircraft guns to the English south coast to engage the V-1s before
44:13they got in land.
44:19Although V-1 attacks against southern England would continue until the end of March 1945, the back of the offensive
44:26had been largely broken by September 1944.
44:36But Hitler had another miracle weapon, the V-2 rocket, which had a one-ton warhead and could reach speeds
44:43of three and a half thousand miles per hour.
44:53The first of these struck England on the 9th of September 1944.
44:58There was little that ADGB could do, since this first ever ballistic missile flew too high and too fast to
45:05be intercepted.
45:07The Allied ground advance through France took care of the V-1 fixed launches, but the V-2s remained a
45:13threat, since they used mobile launches.
45:16It was only the Allied air offensive against German oil and communications that finally brought the V-2 attacks to
45:23a halt.
45:29On the 15th of September 1945, on the 5th anniversary of RAF Fighter Command's epic battle, which finally dashed Hitler's
45:38dream of invading Britain,
45:39a group of veteran fighter pilots gathered at RAF North Wield.
45:44Among them was Douglas Bader.
45:46Hugh Dowding, who had led the command during those critical days when the fate of Britain hung in the balance,
45:51was also there to see his chicks.
45:54The pilots then climbed into their planes and took off to fly over war-torn central London
45:59at the head of an armada of 300 RAF aircraft.
46:10It was a fitting commemoration, both of the end of the war and to the few,
46:16the young pilots who had played the lead role in what Churchill had called Britain's finest hour.
46:22Many years later, Douglas Bader summed up the spirit of Fighter Command.
46:27Well, the tremendous comradeship.
46:30The gay, I mean, look at them, they're all old and round the bend now, but you know,
46:35they were young and gay and cheerful, you know, in the old days.
46:41Although Fighter Command itself no longer exists in the Royal Air Force,
46:45today's fast jet pilots continue to strive to live up to the courage and dash displayed by their forebears.
46:52The gladiators, in their hurricanes and spitfires,
46:56who ensured that Britain would fight on against Nazi tyranny.
47:01The
47:01The
47:01The
47:01The
47:01The
47:02The
47:10The
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