Raise a glass today to the gallant lads of the RAF…
“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” - Winston Churchill
I’ll raise my glass to that.
Hear, hear!
Any videos of the event?
A flyby by 40 Spitfires and Hurricanes… I’ll be in my bunk.
Couple of minutes here:
http://news.sky.com/video/1553123/battle-of-britain-remembered
There’s also a short clip in the first link of the OP.
Ohhh… pretty.
I have to point out thought, that they should had been flying in a Vic formation… 
Mixed emotions; as the anniversaries get longer ago I’m reminded of how few of the vets are left. A toast to the Brits and another for all those who fought the Good War.
I was at the Goodwood Revival Saturday where a few Spitfires and Hurricanes displayed. A friend went back to Goodwood yesterday to watch them all take off. One of the flights went over my house (Farnborough, Hampshire) at around 3:00pm yesterday. I didn’t see them directly but could hear them and their shadow flashed over the window.
American here, saluting “the few.” As a child, the first model airplane I can remember was an RAF Hurricane.What’s a Hurricane, I wondered? I knew what a Spitfire was. I admired the Spitfire’s beauty and performance. And yet…I read about the Hurricanes too, an older deign, not as fast, but every bit as heavily armed…going up to fight the outnumbering, never-yet-beaten Germans. Going up tired and scared. Going up every day because it had to be done.
And that was Britain to me, in her finest hour. Somebody had to make a stand against Hitler. Beaten, almost disarmed, and alone, without allies, Britain stood. Every day.
Because it had to be done.
Well said !
Well said.
Also: *Merlin engines!! *goosebumps
Alone and without allies?
Except of course for Australia (declared war on Germany September 3, 1939); New Zealand (September 3, 1939); South Africa (September 6, 1939); Canada (September 10, 1939); India and Newfoundland (both at war under the British declaration, September 3, 1939).
A BoB memorial I’ve daydreamed is a long pond, down the center of which on 20-foot stalks are six bronze full-scale Spitfires, each performing its section of a victory roll.
As an American, I tend to think of all of those as outlying parts of Britain. Possibly that’s assuming too much.
There’s that old comment that when you’re in a deep hole you should stop digging…. :rolleyes:
Canada, New Zealand and South Africa are outlying parts of Britain? India as well?
What an amazing statement.
Leaving that aside, I believe the saddest bit about the Battle Of Britain- apart from the deaths on both sides- was the treatment of Dowding and Park. (I guess as Park was a Kiwi he was an outlying part of London anyway).
Leigh-Mallory, Sholto Douglas and even Douglas Bader really have a lot to answer for- and Churchill as well.
As amazing as a British person saying they think of the American states as just being outlying parts of the British Empire too.
But surely no one could be that clueless.
I agree Dowding was treated shabbily, but Park went on to command the defense of Malta, so it’s not like he was totally sidelined.
It’s also worth mentioning that along with many Commonwealth airmen, who were definitely not British, there were significant numbers of escaped airmen from countries the Nazis had already conquered flying for the RAF in the BoB. Poles, Czechs, Belgians, Dutch, French, and so on.
There were even a tiny handful of American volunteers.
Very true. I understand though that the Polish (as an example) had some difficulty adjusting as the controls were different as on the wrong side of the aircraft they had flown (I am not a pilot obviously).
Billy Fiske was the most famous American (though he claimed to be Canadian).