The Battle of Britain

The greatest air battle in history was fought in the skies over southern England between the RAF and the Luftwaffe in the high summer of 1940. Riding high on the success of their Blitzkrieg campaign that had steamrollered France and the Low Countries into defeat, by June 1940 the Nazi forces were poised on the Channel coast ready to invade England. In their way stood the heavily outnumbered squadrons of the RAF which they believed would quickly fall when confronted with the might of Goering’s Luftwaffe. They could not have been more mistaken. In the desperate air battles that followed, played out against the piercing blue skies of one of the hottest British summers on record, the ‘Few’ of the RAF succeeded in defeating a numerically superior Luftwaffe, thereby preventing the invasion of England by German forces. AUTHOR: Roy Conyers Nesbit served as a navigator on Bristol Beauforts and Douglas Dakotas during the Second World War. He is the author of many aviation books including The Flight of Rudolf Hess, The Eyes of the RAF and RAF: An Illustrated History from 1918 (The History Press). 100 colour and 100 b/w illustrations