Today, September 15, is “Battle of Britain Day” in the United Kingdom, the day on which they recall what Churchill called “their finest hour”. Sixty-nine years ago, the blue skies over London were marked by thin white contrails marking the path of hundreds of fighter and bomber aircraft, contesting for air superiority over the British capital. September 15 did not mark the largest air battle in the extended campaign called “The Battle of Britain”; neither was it the bloodiest (historian Alfred Price aptly described August 18th “The Hardest Day” in his eponymous book, on which the Germans lost 69 aircraft and the British a staggering 68), nor was it the last (German daylight raids continued well into November, including a belated appearance by the hopelessly outclassed Italian air force). But September 15 did mark the irrevocable “tipping point”, the day on which the German high command admitted to itself that air superiority could not be achieved in 1940, and therefore the planned German invasion of Britain, Operation Sealion, would not happen that year. In fact, it would not happen at all, because shortly afterwards Adolph Hitler turned his mind towards his nemesis, the Soviet Union. And so, in a very real way, today does mark this first British victory, which, if it did not ensure victory, did ensure that defeat was not imminent.

Today a rapidly dwindling handful of men octogenarians, Churchill’s “Few” become ever fewer, and as they pass, we are losing touch with that desperate but somehow romantic summer of 1940. Look at their pictures from back then, and they seem so incredibly young, incredibly eager, the finest flower of Britain–until you seen the fatigue and tension in their eyes. More than half of the pilots who flew for Fighter Command in the Battle of Britain didn’t survive the war; many who did were permanently scarred by horrible burns and other injuries. There is a tendency to think of the Few as being exclusively British (perhaps bolstered by some Canadians and a handful of “prematurely anti-fascist” Americans. In reality, RAF Fighter Command was a rather cosmopolitan bunch with representatives from all corners of the British Empire–Australia, South Africa, Rhodesia, India, Palestine–but also consisting of refugees from the air forces of Nazi-conquered Europe, particularly the Poles and Czechs.