Don't Demote the RAF

This editorial in the Telegraph takes issue with revisionist historians who say the Royal Navy won the Battle of Britian:

The revisionists argue that such was the might of the Home Fleet that a German seaborne invasion would never have reached these shores and the aerial battle of that blazing summer was therefore little short of irrelevant...In reality, the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940 saw the first defeat for Hitler's war machine and in the process gave this country a priceless morale boost after the humiliation of Dunkirk.

It also helped swing American opinion behind the British cause, thanks in no small part to the inestimable war reporting from London of Edward R Murrow. This was a heroic defensive victory and was to be this country's last taste of glory until the offensive victory at El Alamein in 1942, which finally started to turn the tide of the war. It is also worth noting that the revisionist claim of naval impregnability hardly sits comfortably with what happened at the Battle of Crete in 1941, when our fleet was cut to pieces by the Luftwaffe.

I was thinking about the Crete analogy as well. The Brits suffered greatly for lack of airpower in the earlier Battle of France and later during the seige of Singapore. The truth is, civilization owes much to "The Few" who saved Britian in 1940.