Myths about The Battle for Britain and Alamein

BY MIKE

The myths that surround the Battle of Britain have been repeated so often that they are now accepted as gospel. In disagreement Sunday Times Special Correspondent and author Phillip Knightley.

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The erudite scholar and researcher authored The First Casualty – The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist, and Myth Maker from the Crimea to Vietnam’. He revealed that Britain in ‘its finest hour’ was far from being the ‘Britain at Bay’ underdog of legend.

British air defence consisted of 1,416 aircraft set against 963 German aircraft. Britain had the further advantage of retrieving downed pilots and salvaging downed airplanes whereas German aircraft and pilots were irretrievably lost.

Yet throughout the battle the RAF regularly lost more fighters than the Luftwaffe, it was the German bombers that swelled the score and to break even the British had to shoot down a great many of them.’ in fact, he goes on to point out owed more to the radar advantage.

Fighter pilots often found Churchill’s rhetoric embarrassing, not the least such descriptions as ‘crusaders’ who ‘grin when they fight’. 

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It was in many respects an ignoble and bloody confrontation. The RAF had no qualms about shooting down a Heinkel 59 clearly marked with the Red Cross and civilian markings as it engaged in rescuing downed German pilots.

In fact, the only RAF pilot to win a Victoria Cross, Flight Lieutenant J. B Nicholson, was wounded by the Home Guard who, mistaking him for a German pilot, blazed away at him as he parachuted to earth.

On the ‘big day’ of the Battle of Britain, sometime in August 1940, the RAF claimed 189 German aircraft shot down for the loss of only 39 of their own.

This incorrect claim became firmly fixed in everyone’s mind largely due to hysterical newspaper reporting. We now know from Luftwaffe records that the Luftwaffe actually lost 52 aircraft on that day.

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It is morally wrong to reduce a human tragedy like the Battle of Britain to a mathematical equation. However, the loss ratio of 4:3, which actually occurred more evenly, balanced the RAF claim of one of five or 6:1.

The Battle for Alamein is similarly overblown: There, at this desert redoubt, twelve British and Commonwealth divisions fought against three German divisions of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps.

British Field Marshall Montgomery had at his disposal 800 tanks at Alamein set against Field Marshall Rommel’s fifty tanks.  It does not take a military genius to win when the odds are that much in one’s favour. FIRST PUBLISHED IN The All Lies Invasion, Mike Walsh, banned by Amazon after pressure from the Jewish lobby.

Found at https://europerenaissance.com/2024/01/13/myths-about-the-battle-for-britain-and-alamein/