Read on Twitter
1. On this the 80th anniversary of the beginning of the Battle of Britain, it is necessary to remind ourselves of a few facts. Not least because of how the battle is invoked in a #Brexit context.
2. Legend has it that "the few" climbed into their Spitfires to repel the would be invaders. It's surprising that this myth survives. There are, after all, a great many D-Day historians on Twitter who should know better...
3. D-Day nerds will gladly bore on at length about Hobart's funnies (specialised armoured vehicles), PLUTO and the Mulberry harbours, landing craft etc. There are also plentiful photographs showing the build up of vehicles and equipment around Portsmouth and the south.
4. At the time there was no such corresponding build up of German forces in respect of a German invasion. It;s not something you can hide. The Germans always knew D-Day was a matter of when not if. The German invasion had no formal or physical manifestation.
5. Not even Churchill believed it plausible or likely to succeed.
6. With over 1000 armed patrol vessels at the Navy's disposal, Churchill considered such an adventure impossible. He did not believe an invasion was imminent or likely to succeed. Moreover, Germany was putting our peace feelers. It did not want a war with Britain.
7. Once you remove invasion foundation myth from the narrative, the subsequent mythology of the Battle of Britain also starts to fall apart. Especially when media reports from the time are a work of fiction. Particularly aircraft losses, manipulated in either direction.
8. This is not to say there weren't Spitfires battling Messerschmitts over the Channel, but this must be viewed as a mutually useful piece of political theatre aimed at persuasion. For Germany the aim was to dissuade the UK from fighting, hoping to demoralise the British public.
9. The second part of it was to degrade Britain's ability to fight and its military confidence, not least by disrupting manufacturing and supply chains. The RAF counter offensive was simply the raw material for the propaganda effort to galvanize British public morale.
10. The BoB, therefore, is misframed as an RAF victory by "The Few". It's a narrative construct imposed on events after the war. What kept us in the game, though was a combined effort by the Navy, Intelligence, anti aircraft gunners and the British public who kept industry going.
11. The great invasion scare story was one used by both sides in the same way that governments use scares even today from global warming to BSE. In this instance, the scare became a national foundation myth in the public consciousness of modern Britain.
12. This is how you get jumped up little twerps like Mark Francois who have it that a plucky Britain stood alone, whose knights of the air repelled the invading hordes. But it wasn't "the few" who came to our rescue. We rescued ourselves.
13. We rescued ourselves, not just from the Germans but from an incompetent British government whose handling of events was no better than today. Our pilot shortage, such that it was, was entirely self inflicted by way of inadequate air sea rescue. ...
14. German raiders operated with impunity and were able to bomb the fuel depot at Pembroke dock (the UK's largest blaze since the Great Fire of London) and not a single Spitfire was dispatched in its defence.
15. Then only through outrage and scandal were authorities forced to open the London tubes as air raid shelters. They'd have let us die, fearing revolution and industrial action would foment during the long hours underground.
16. So as much as the Brexiteers are full of it with the "you'd be speaking german" etc, remainers too have it wrong. This isn't a sudden slide into breathtaking incompetence while the public are spoonfed propaganda that bears no relation to reality. It's always been like this.
17. To date though, museums and heritage organisations still teach the government's version of events, the myth of "the few" coming to the rescue of "the many"; a pervasive myth that still distorts our national self image and one which robs the British people of their achievement
18. If there is a lesson, it is that though events happen, the prism through which they are viewed can be distorted, and when you challenge the central myth, the subsequent narratives always fall apart and it changes the way we view history - and ourselves.
xx. As @RichardAENorth notes, The mythology of the Battle of Britain, as a discrete event, never actually existed: the dates had to be defined by Air Ministry bureaucrats, yet air fighting preceded 10 July and went on through 1941.
The attack on Pembroke dock, was in June 1940.
The attack on Pembroke dock, was in June 1940.
