http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/jul/16/theobserver.uknews1

@ JRKjellen

An interesting link, but the German witnesses seem to flat out disagree with each other and I see no reason why a pilot would know much about German high command strategy anyway. It is largely meaningless.

None of them claim to have been defeated.

That they were defeated is beyond doubt. The Luftwaffe's goals were not achieved. The RAF's were.

How do we know what the Luftwaffe's goals were?

@ JRKjellen

Like the laws of mathematics, the laws of warfare are pretty much universal. It is fairly obvious from their targets what their goals are.

Of course, I could be totally wrong. If the Luftwaffe's goals were to have their bombers engage in dogfights with RAF fighters in broad daylight and far from home, and waste vast amounts of men and equipment in the process, then they succeeded brilliantly.

Read the book (linked above). It really is very good.

That was "@JRKjellen:"

The Battle of Britain led to those immortal words...

"Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few" Churchill also said that the Battle of Britain should be remembered as our finest hour even if Britain was to survive for a thousand years.

Whenever people in the UK moan about foreigners, I remind them that our nation owes so much to the 20% of foreign pilots that helped save our country including a number of Poles (145) Chech (88), South Africans (25) Irish (41) and Americans (11). As America was technically neutral at the time and Americans were forbidden to serve for the British many Americans enlisted under other nationalities including Canadian, so their numbers were probably higher. The Irish too took a huge risk in serving as their country was neutral and families were shunned for years and denied jobs for helping the Brits.

The air campaign did not end in October 1940. The fact that one side doesn't consider this a battle at all, but part of a larger Blitzkrieg campaign that only ended in 1941, causes a number of problems for making claims about the Germans having lost by October 1940. How can the skirmishes between Spitfires & Messerschmitts be separated out into a separate battle from the overall conflict? Estimates of lost aircraft suggest that the Luftwaffe lost more aircraft in the Battle of France (in a shorter period of time) than they did in the British airwar, but nobody would say the Germans were defeated in that battle.

"Whenever people in the UK moan about foreigners, I remind them that our nation owes so much to the 20% of foreign pilots that helped save our country including a number of Poles "

But to be fair, the fact that the British gave up their empire in order to protect an autonomous German inhabited port from annexation to the Reich more than makes up for the 145 pilots they got in return.

The Canadian RAF - we owe them a debt of gratitude, they weren't doing deals with the Nazis and sitting on the fence watching whilst Europe burned

I'm assuming that's a dig at America. Typical ungrateful European. How dare you say "sitting on the fence," as if there was ever a chance the United States could have joined the war on the side of the Axis. Or maybe you're too stupid to know the meaning of idioms in your own language?

Twat

Not sure what national interests of Canada were advanced by the declaration of war. They didn't support the Crown in the Chanak crisis, what changed with Danzig I'm not sure.

What changed was probably the fact that it had been 21 years since the end of the Great War rather than only 4. That the issue was one of outright aggression in the heart of Europe rather than messy, technical treaty terms involving strange people who use a lot of olive oil must have had something to do with it too.

@JRKjellen: So Germany collecting more than 2000 large barges on the coast (most of them capable of carrying 3 or more tanks) wasn't for Operation Sea Lion (Hitler's plan to invade Britain)?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_Canada_during_World_War_II

Check out that poster! Even in a poster meant to inspire Canadians, and probably used as a recruiting tool ... Look how scared that poor Canadian looks! Gun in hand and fear in eyes ... No wonder maple is so bitter!

The river barges were not meant for an operation like Sealion and had to be pulled by slowmoving tugs. The likelihood of these vessels being able to cross the Channel without the Royal Navy around was low at best.

I don't see how Turkey threatening neutral territory on the Dardanelles that used to belong to Turkey is qualitatively different than Germany threatening neutral territory on the Baltic that used to belong to Germany. Both treaties - Sevres & Versailles, were considered unduly harsh by most observers during the interwar years. If anything, since Canadians had fought on the Turkish front during the Great War and didn't have such ties to the eastern front, you'd think Chanak would have been a bigger deal.

I happen to disagree with that, but even conceding all your points about the nature of the two crises, I think the passage of time is the decisive factor. I have to think the Canadian public in 1922 was in a much more anti-war mood than they were in 1939, over twenty years after the end of the First World War. It must be harder to send the same age cohort to war right after a global slaughter like that than to send a new batch of young men decades later, as depressing as that sounds.

"Estimates of lost aircraft suggest that the Luftwaffe lost more aircraft in the Battle of France (in a shorter period of time) than they did in the British airwar, but nobody would say the Germans were defeated in that battle."

I think someone here might have mentioned the term objectives.

"The Canadian RAF - we owe them a debt of gratitude, they weren't doing deals with the Nazis and sitting on the fence watching whilst Europe burned"

Fuck the canucks. lets see them solve syria.

Operation Sea Lion [16 July 1940]: "The aim of this operation will be to eliminate the English homeland as a base for the prosecution of the war against Germany and, if necessary, to occupy it completely."

http://www.alternatewars.com/WW2/WW2_Documents/Fuhrer_Directives/FD_16.htm

The first paragraph of FD 16 makes it clear that Sealion is in the early stages of being planned and there has been no decision to actually carry it out.

The first sentence says, "Since England, despite the hopeless military situation still gives no sign of any readiness to come to terms, I have decided to prepare for invasion of that country and, if necessary, to carry it through".

It later says that preparations must be complete by the middle of August, preparations that never were completed. Subsequent orders continually revised the planning of the operation, and as early as August 1, 1940 the OKW had said that if preparations are not complete by September 15, the operation will be called off.