We’re all familiar with the story. In the summer of 1940, Royal Air Force pilots defeated Nazi Germany’s Luftwaffe over the skies of southern England and saved Britain from invasion. “Our fate,” Winston Churchill wrote years later, “depended on victory in the air.”
The Battle of Britain was a humiliation for the Luftwaffe, which may have lost almost 2,000 aircraft and seen well over 4,000 airmen killed, wounded, missing, and captured - undoubtedly far more than the British, although figures vary. It was a propaganda triumph for a beleaguered island, with strategic implications, in particular in the US, where Americans considered anew the UK’s will to resist. It was an important victory, and the pilots’ courage was undeniable.
But, in truth, there’s little chance that Germany could have invaded England,…
