News: 1600236129

The Spitfire is maybe the most beautiful warplane of WW2.

Remove maybe

Remove "of WW2"

get over it.

"You started it"

Only a fool ignores history, good or bad.

>the empire is gone

And because Britain stood up to them, so are the Nazis

Nazis are everywhere... worldwide more and more people are held in camps under appalling conditions for the sake of the political capital to be made by abusing them, or the fortunes to be made (in some cases) by appropriating their territory and assets. Uighurs, Mexicans, Sirians, Rohinga, Palestinians, I can't even be bothered to list them. Tyrranical and racist police states never went away and are in resurgence right now.

The Empire is gone for two primary reasons:

1 - We gave it back, because we support self-determination of well governed nations

2 - We bankrupted the world's largest ever Empire to defeat the Nazis

You don't have to thank us. We did it as a matter of principle.

We did it as a matter of principle. - while it's nice to believe that, it was, in fact, done as a matter of necessity. The principled part was a comforting justification, but rest assured if circumstances had been otherwise hell could have frozen over and those motivated by greed, entitlement and arrogance would still have maintained their grip on the right to plunder and oppress, however dressed up in 'principles' it needed to be in order to salve the consciences of all those who benefited.

Don't kid yourselves. An individual can be principled and willingly take the hit of being so, but make it two people, and keep adding to the group, and that willingness and ability to be truly principled, and to act accordingly, goes down in proportion. The temptation to greed and power grabbing is just too much for too many of us, and those of us who 'follow the money' as our highest aim in life are sure to gather where money, and power, are to be had. And fight tooth and nail to hang on to the entitlement for as long as possible.

Don't imagine it has stopped. The UK is where it is now in large part because of the ongoing actions of the greed, entitlement and arrogance of 'the few'.

If one looks at the costs of WW1 and WW2, it's pretty clear that Britain could have handled either one of the wars by itself, but not both. At the end of WW1, there were strong voices suggesting not to push all fault for the war, and massive war reparation payments on Germany, for various reasons, including to avoid the rise of characters like Hitler.

While it's debatable if a Hitler would have emerged had the Versailles Treaty been less harsh, and while one can't "blame" WW2 on those who penned the Treaty's key provisions -- i.e. France and England -- they certainly had a hand in forging one of the key links that made WW2 possible.

So perhaps one might say, "You don't have to thank us. We broke it, so we did our best to fix it as a matter of principle."

[1]The schoolgirl who helped design the Spitfire

[2]The Woman Whose Invention Helped Win a War — and Still Baffles Weathermen

My dad still hates the Germans, I had to ask a German girlfriend to claim she was Swiss. But it means I've been seeped in war documentaries. The tech invention I think had the greatest effect on the outcome was the [3]proximity fuse .

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-53352233

[2] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/woman-whose-invention-helped-win-warand-still-baffles-weathermen-180970900/

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proximity_fuze

Rejewski, Zygalski, Różycki and their 'Bomba' - known in the UK as a 'bombe'

Boffins haven't gone away today, they have just morphed into another intelligence norm/phorm and are still advising government leaders .... which/whom you are best served believing are not necessarily in the guise of any media hosted politician ..... with news of and proposals for novel developments/Great Game Changing Operations.

The abiding initial difficulty that probably will always remain in the sub-prime human realm, by the very nature of the advanced information delivered advising leaders of Great Game Changing Operations, is an incredulous doubt that such be in any way possible, simply because they and/or their colleagues are neither able nor enabled to successfully achieve and deliver the proposals and matters under development discussions. Fortunately though, that is just a faux problem which has been resolved with solutions to be easily delivered by A.N.Others to those who and that which would require them ....... for to imagine that there be any choice to deny such developments or prevent their escape into future consciousness and universal presentation, is to suffer and confine oneself in a monumental delusion ........ which is a bitterly cold comfort blanket of zero great worth.

You talk about BP, but not about the RAF's Y Service who actually provided the raw intel - plus did a lot of analysis themselves.

In fact German speakers in Y were really crucial during the Battle of Britain. They listened to German chit chat and were able to provide a lot of useful tactical intelligence as raids built - given the way that the Luftwaffe spent ages assembling these massive formations of bombers before heading across the channel.

Y also were the ones to report that the Germans were packing up their kit in France, Sealion was abandoned and the Battle of Britain was actually over.

So lets hear it for the boys and girls of Y!

I should have also mentioned Y's involvement in countering "Headache" - the Lorenz/Knickebein beam guidance for Luftwaffe night bombing.

And then later the X-Gerät and Y-Gerät systems which improved on Knickebein.

But its just another example of quite how high tech WW2 became vs WW1.

Alongside other nationalities (as mentioned). There were a couple of kids at my school whose names ended in “...owski”. Good chance it was because their Dads stayed on. Thanks, guys.

If you look left from the A40, travelling into London, just after passing Northolt, you can glimpse the eagle on top of the [1]Polish Air Force War Memorial . At the end of the war, many settled in England, there's been a thriving [2]Polish Club in Amersham since the 50s.

[1] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Polish+Air+Force+Memorial/@51.5525718,-0.4111182,16z

[2] https://www.amershampolishclub.co.uk/history.php

Wow, this piece should get the gammon chests puffing.

Well, I'd consider myself a mainly-left-of-centre, liberal, open-minded, partially hippy, chilled snowflake and it has to be said: if it wasn't for the RAF, Spitfires, Hurricanes, Radar, pilots, ground crews, lookouts, crypto-decoders and tons of other very committed (and I guess desperate) people standing up in their darkest hour against the 'bad guy facist invaders', we'd have been seriously stuffed. So yes, the sound and sight of a Spit does bring up a few emotions... you don't have to be a modern-day Gammon to appreciate it.

There was no concerted effort by the British government to invest in military technology. Quite the contrary. Military spending was woefully inadequate in the lead up to WWII.

To suggest otherwise detracts from the real reason that battle was not lost: Sacrifices by British, Commonwealth and Polish pilots. Flag waving jingoism and the chance to rave over military hardware porn always ends up brushing over the reality.

Well, British military spending in the early to mid 1930's was inadequate. However, it ramped up in the late 1930's, as the deficiencies (and probable war with Nazi Germany) became clear. And it did so early enough that the RAF had Spitfires and Hurricanes in relatively large numbers.

However, the main reason that Britain won the Battle of Britain is that contrary to the national stereotypes, the British were exceptionally competent and professional, whereas the Germans were ill-prepared and making it up as they went along.

Not mentioned in the article is that the RAF had an integrated control network, linking radar to observer corps to sector control rooms to squadrons, meaning that, broadly, the battle was controlled at every stage, whereas the Germans took off on a planned mission and then could only react to what the British did with the forces on the spot.

The British rotate their squadrons to avoid pilot fatigue (the Germans didn't).

The British had reasonably good intelligence overall, the German intelligence was atrocious.

The British fought a battle they had been preparing for for about 4 years, the Germans didn't.

Even the competent ones who were capable of planning were hampered by having a Führer who considered himself way more competent than he actually was, with very few staff capable of steering him away from disastrous actions. Resulting in him regularly biting off (more curtains) than he could chew.

There was also a lack of coordination between the Heer, Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe about inventions they were presented with, quite often developing similar stuff separately as well as just going with the totally bonkers because someone higher up was married to the inventor's niece or something.

whereas the Germans took off on a planned mission and then could only react to what the British did with the forces on the spot.

Also, a German plane shot down over England was lost, including its crew. RAF pilots and planes had a decent chance of getting refurbished and return to action if they were still reasonably intact.

As opposed to yourself who appears to hate Britain?

"s opposed to yourself who appears to hate Britain?"

Stupid comment of the day. Congrats.

I am guessing you are a cotton wool wrapped ignorant millenial or gen xer who understands little or nothing of what that war means to Britain and the world.

I'm a boomer, when I was a kid all of our parents had fought in the war, either in the forces or played their part in the civilian life of the country,nearly every family had lost members or friends due to combat or bombing, certainly no-one was unaffected by the war.

As a kid up until the sixties we played on bomb sites in and around London, it wascommon for bombs and ordnance to be dug on most construction sites, I remember watching a group of Paddies digging a trench, pulling out dozens of small incendiary bombs and chucking them into an oil drum full of water.

The North bound entrance to the Blackwall tunnel under the modern cladding still has the 20mm cannon shell marks from where an Me 190 strafed the traffic.

So it has feck all to do with gammons and everything to do with the fact you are able to make your vacuous comments here.

David Jason visited the BOBMF.

One of the personel was commenting that some kit was like Trigger's Broom without realising the connection.

Finished with 1 Lancaster 3 Spitfires 1 Hurricane in formation.

"it is important to remember that had Britain not invested in the science and technology capability to come up with such innovations, it is probable that the Battle of Britain may have gone the other way."

We didnt invest enough or at least invest in the right places. If they had invested in Mr Whittle's ideas or put money into some of the other Rolls Royce engines we would have had a wider variety of aircraft that easy surpassed rather than matched their Luftwaffe counterparts.

@Hairy Spod

"We didnt invest enough or at least invest in the right places."

It is unfortunate that we dont know what we need to invest in until the time arrives or even has gone. Not wanting trench warfare like WW1 informed a lot of the decisions, but that was the war to end all wars. Instead of military the money was spent other ways.

I do wonder if we are doing the same now in Europe. How many countries are prepared under NATO? When Russia kicked off I seem to remember seeing assumptions that the Russians (should they invade Europe) would make great gains before meeting resistance. Watching the worry in Germany that Trump moved US troops from there to Poland.

I'm not sure they'd bother, given all those open SCADA systems.

If you are going to mention radar then you should include Sir Henry Tizard in that as well. It is also worth noting that the Frisch–Peierls memorandum came about as a result of both Frisch and Peierls being excluded from work on radar due to their German nationality. Tizard was sceptical of the likelihood of an atomic bomb being developed, reckoning the odds of success at 100,000 to 1, and gave Frisch and Peierls this project to see if they could prove him wrong.

What's often overlooked and taken for granted is the established air raid plotting with the sector/central fighter control systems (and the requiired dedicated telephonic commos) were put in place well before the Chain home radar was stood up which increased the 'seeing' distance of incoming raids, the radar could watch raids being assembled over France giving more reaction time to get squadrons into position to intercept etc. Before Chain home the system was entirely human sensed by volunteer sky watchers at many points alond the south coast and inland to track raiders across inland areas.

The planning and established raid precautions were put in place well before radar was a going proposition (work was begun right at the end of WW1 to track Gotha bombing raids but the end of the first war took the build out of the system away as a priority), previously sound location was attempted for dectection of incoming raids but even at the time the limitations of sound location were well known and recognised as being obsolecent at best due to the increased speeds of aircraft rendering plotting innacurate and untimely leading to more confusion.

Interestingly the contrast with continental work on this problem is revealing where French/German/Belgian arrangements were much more piecemeal, mostly consisting of local contacts to airforce officers attached to ground forces HQ's passing on to higher airforce for direction and orders to put aircraft aloft to try to intercept often on a 'enemy aircraft seen over Ostend heading north/south/east/west, no infomation as to numbers, types, or age of infomation etc' which gives the advantage to the attacking raiders. The raid plotting and control allowed by sector/central control backed up by Observer corps & volunteers skywatchers and the increasingly effective Chain Home Radar rebalanced to a certain extent the tactical advantage of the attacking force.

Yes, the Dowding System.

Churchill himself gave credit to this as the key to victory:

"All the ascendancy of the Hurricanes and Spitfires would have been fruitless but for this system which had been devised and built before the war. It had been shaped and refined in constant action, and all was now fused together into a most elaborate instrument of war, the like of which existed nowhere in the world"

Yes but the thing is fighter control was being thought about without the enabler of Radar, it didnt appear fully formed there was a background of thinking which is mostly overlooked sadly.

... such as 100 octane aviation spirit, which the Air Ministry began buying in large quantities from US refiners. A month or two on from Dunkirk, same fighter aircraft, same engines, MORE POWER!

I'm getting kinda peeved these days with this repeated "Britain stood alone" crap. No it fucking didn't. It would be much more accurate to say "the British Empire stood alone". The contributions of us colonials keeps getting forgotten amongst all the jingoism.

Cue the downvote storm...

No downvote here. Not just the Empire either, the Hungarians, the Poles, Free French and other Europeans both in the UK and in their own countries also supported Britain during that bleak period.

upvoted, but not entirely correct - Hungarians were on the other side (along with Finns, Slovaks, Bulgarians and Romanians)

But that's because we've all seen the cartoon by Lowe: "Very Well, Alone!"

That is, of course, Lowe, the New Zealander....

"Britain stood alone" seems to fit most people's prejudices (and there are equally inaccurate popular viewpoints of the US and USSR contributions that gloss over their less positive bits).

It also avoids the slight inconvenience that Britain was fighting for freedom and democracy and at the same time had the world's largest empire.

And of course, when you stop to think about the size and resources available to the Empire (The Indian army was huge, and was all volunteer, as just one example), the popular myth of the Nazi giant being faced down by plucky Britain fighting for its survival suddenly becomes the Nazi bully meeting the first team rugby squad (Britain + commonwealth +empire) and doomed to getting a beating.

True, but in summer 1940 the Common Wealth wasn't about to come under heavy air attack or stood waiting for a seaborne invasion.

At that critical moment, everything hinged on the island holding out and critically the very moment hung on what Downding described as "Our young men will have to shoot down their young men at the rate of five to one."

The power of the Empire would come to play later and ultimate wartime victory in Europe was only possible because of the weight, plus of course the industrial might of the USA and the sheer military muscle of the USSR.

Allied victory is what was achieved, not British, not British Empire, not USA, not Soviet.

Allied.

It's certainly right to honor the various RAF and affiliated casualties, but lets also remember the many thousands of civilians in London and elsewhere and the couple hundred merchant mariners running convoys through the English Channel who died during the Battle of Britain.

Fun story, my grandfather was doing some secret radio work as part of the British Post Office in London during the Battle of Britain and The Blitz. This was more for marine and aerial navigation than for the ULTRA effort. I'm not sure it was during the Battle of Britain or The Blitz, but early one morning he was alerted that the building his team was in had taken a bomb hit on the roof overnight. He rounded up his group and came in early and found that the bomb had cracked the walls, thrown furniture and glass around, knocked out the utilities and made a mess of the roof and top floor or two, but the building was still standing. Due to his group's involvement in the war effort, they just kind of matter-of-factly removed all their materials and equipment and carried it across the street to another building, and kicked the existing tenants out. I have cassette tapes about his war experiences that he left me and my siblings.