Paul Davies has posted something on the page that deserves reading, but because he isnt an admin, it went into the side bar. I thought it deserved wider readership, so here it is: Today 74 years ago, Hitler postponed his planned Invasion of Britain in 1940. September 17th 1940 saw 3 more RAF pilots killed. In 1 month from August 15th to September 15th in 1940, around 201 RAF aircrew were killed, 495 RAF fighters lost.This was an average of 6.29 pilots killed each day and 15.47 valuable aircraft lost or destroyed on a daily basis. If we take a look at the Luftwaffe figures, the Luftwaffe lost 1,132 aircrew and 862 aircraft in one month alone, to add to losses incurred by the RAF from July and also the earlier losses suffered by the Luftwaffe at Dunkirk and in the Battle of France 1940. This averaged out at 35.37 aircrew lost each day and 26.93 aircraft lost or destroyed every day for the last 32 day period. In this last month, on August 23, the Germans began attacking aircraft factories and fighter airfields and in just 2 of these weeks lost 262 fighter planes and the Germans lost 378. British fighter pilots were worn out and extremely stressed, and these two weeks of fighting were described as the blackest days of the Battle of Britain. We nearly lost the battle between August 15th and September 7th when the tactics changed to attacking London, sparing the fighter airfields and the pilots a little, so that we survived until the crucial decision day, postponed earlier and now made to be a final decision whether to invade or not, taken as 17th September and postponed indefinitely. The Battle of Britain pilots and aircrews did this;They saved Britain and also stopped its people being deported to concentration camps, death by firing squads, starvation and the other horrors suffered by the occupied countries like Poland, Holland, France and so on. A total of 544 men from Fighter Command and over 700 from Bomber Command lost their lives between July 10th and October 31st 1940. These add to the RAF men we lost earlier in July and also those lost still fighting to save Britain in the battle FOR Britain, in the Forgotten Months of November and December 1940 when we were still losing pilots outside of these official B of B dates like McKellar of 605, one of the top scorers in the Battle of Britain, killed, as many were, fighting against great odds. May we remember these men this Sunday, Battle of Britain Sunday 21st September. I will do this with some of The Few at Westminster Abbey and will say a prayer for those who fell, those I have met who are no longer here also and for these last of The Few, in thanks and remembrance of what they did for Britain 74 years ago.
Posted on: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 13:23:25 +0000
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