I attended the 72nd anniversary of the Battle of Britain at Ottawa’s Aviation Museum on 16 September, under flawless blue skies – a bit like during the Battle itself – and in the presence of the Chief of Air Staff, veterans, cadets and members on parade of the Royal Canadian Air Force. I said the following:
It is right and fitting that we celebrate Battle of Britain Day every year.
It was a pivotal moment.
After the long stalemates of the First World War, Hitler’s armies had overrun Poland, Denmark and Norway with shocking rapidity. In May 1940, they invaded the Netherlands, Belgium and France. With great bravery, the Royal Navy and the “small boats” had evacuated 330,000 British and French troops from Dunkirk. But it was a retreat, and Western Europe was Hitler’s.
The British Isles now faced something fearful and alien: a vast contagion from the air. The front line would be everywhere, in cities, towns and villages. There had been arial bombardments before, in Spain, and then in Poland, but nothing on the scale gathering across the Channel. A great air armada, as a prelude to invasion, the first that Britain was not sure it could repel since Philip II’s Armarda of 1588.
Only two things stood against it: the people and the machines.
First, the people. As ever, Churchill was clear: “Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war”. He foresaw the whole nation fighting and suffering together, but he offered hope. Britain was united, because “we entered the war upon the national will and with our eyes open, and because we have been nurtured in freedom and individual responsibility and are the products, not of totalitarian uniformity, but of tolerance and variety.” His words still help define us today.
The people’s spearhead were the pilots, mechanics, fitters, radar operators and plotters of the RAF. I’ll come back to them.
And then there were the machines. My invitation to this event has a picture of a Hawker Hurricane. They bore the brunt of the battle. There’s one here in the Aviation Museum, which I hope you’ll look at after the ceremony. It sits next to a clipped-wing Spitfire, a later variant of the earlier marque that flew into legend during the Battle. And they both stand next to a lean and impressively mean ME 109, against which they flew in those bright and deadly summer skies 72 years ago.
More gripping even than the Museum display, however, is the fact that these aircraft will soon fly past us. They’re out there, aloft, as in 1940, awaiting their moment.
It is a huge privilege that we can still see them, and we owe much to Vintage Wings and the other skilled enthusiasts who keep them flying.
More humbling is to meet some of the diminishing band of those who flew them, not just in the Battle of Britain but throughout the war. The Few, sadly getting fewer.
Pilots of many nations served with the RAF. From occupied Europe – Poles, Czechs, Frenchmen; from the United States; and from the Commonwealth: Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans, West Indians.
And many, of course, from Canada, where the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan would soon be producing thousands of pilots for fighters, bombers, transport and reconnaissance aircraft.
115 Canadians flew in the battle. 23 lost their lives. They deserve our gratitude, our tribute and our remembering. And they are remembered – in Canada, and in Britain, and their names are enshrined on the Battle of Britain Monument in London.
Churchill, of course, gave the Battle its name, in his speech to the House of Commons in June 1940, when he said: “The Battle of France is over. The Battle of Britain is about to begin…. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “this was their finest hour”.
It’s worth recalling those words. They’re more than a call to arms, or even duty. They’re a summons to destiny. The generation of 1940 responded, which is why we can stand here in Ottawa, peaceful and free, to remember and celebrate them.
Brave young men and women have continued since 1945 to defend our countries and our values. Canada and Britain still stand shoulder to shoulder, and, as over Libya last year, wing tip to wing tip. In honouring the warriors of 1940, as we do today, we honour their successors too.