Battle of Britian

The Battle of Britain

SFC

SLC CLASS xx-xxx / x Platoon

SGL SFC X

8 SEPTEMBER 2013

I. DEFINE THE SUBJECT

The Battle of Britain began shortly after the fall of France was emanate and would eventually sign an armistice with Germany. This would allow Germany to focus squarely on Great Britain. In late May, 1941 Prime Minister Winston Churchill disregarded calls for peace talks with Hitler and said that Britain “would fight on” (“Churchill decides toll,” 2012). The Battle of Britain was during the time period of June, 1940 to May, 1941 with the heaviest fighting occurring from June to October, 1940. The Battle of Britain was a fierce air battle between the Germans and the British over Great Britain’s airspace which was important as Germany wished to invade by land. As a precursor to the invasion of England, the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) would attack the British coastal defenses, radar stations and shipping ports. This caused almost all of Britain’s Expeditionary Force to become penned in a tiny pocket around the French Channel port of Dunkirk along with a large number of the French Army as well. This caused the British to attempt to rescue over 330,000 men from the Dunkirk coastal line in attempt to fight another day. Of that 330,000+ number approximately 224,000 of them were Britain’s Expeditionary Force which represented about 85 percent Britain’s Army (Macdonal, 1997).

After the fall of France, Germany was very confident and planned very little for this battle. They believed they would first take over airspace and launch a ground attack by sending in their troops across the English Channel which was to be called “Operation Sealion”. First they attacked the normal targets to include military bases and airfields. Shortly afterwards they switched to more strategic targets in an attempted effort to crush the moral of the British, but their morale stayed high and the switch in strategy by the Germans was just the reprieve to the airfields gave...