EP 02 - Who really won the Battle of Britain?

A battle for air superiority?

- Episode 02 -

Who really won the Battle of Britain?

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A battle for air superiority?

3 December 2025

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Who really won the Battle of Britain?

EPISODE 2 - A battle for air superiority?

Camera gun film still shows tracer ammunition from RAF Spitfire, flown by Flight Lieut J H G McArthur, hitting a German Heinkel He 111 in an attack on Bristol Aeroplane Company's works at Filton, 25 September 1940.

No denying the deadly dogfights

One of the most persistent myths in modern British history is the story that, if only the Germans could have achieved air superiority in 1940, the Nazis would have invaded Britain.

There is no denying the dogfights over the Channel in July 1940 were fought with deadly intent. The Luftwaffe lost 279 aircraft. The RAF lost 142. Both sides saw some of their best and most experienced pilots die.

And yet, in the summer of 1940 the German navy told everyone an invasion was impossible. The British Royal Navy was too powerful.

The German air force quickly admitted that it couldn’t do anything either to help protect an invasion. It was hopeless at bombing ships.

In fact, as we show, every senior German officer who studied the facts quickly concluded that the idea of invading Britain was impractical.

Which changes all the rules about this story. Writers like McKinstry (Operation Sealion) are right that throughout the summer of 1940 the Germans went on building a large invasion force. Meanwhile German planes went on attacking British ports and airfields and eventually cities and industries. BUT if the Germans weren’t seriously thinking about invasion, what were they thinking about?

French destroyer Mogador burning after British shellfire, Mers-El-Kebir, 3 July 1940

Why an invasion was just not viable

Those who still believe that a German invasion was viable, whatever the German admirals said to the contrary, say that after the fall of France, the Germans could have added the French navy to their own.

Actually this possibility had already been literally blown out of the water. 3 July 1940 the British sank the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir on the Algerian coast.

Nor can we overlook that the Luftwaffe was very bad at attacking ships. All their hits had been against vessels that were tied up in harbour, or moving slowly just outside.

Having seen how ineffective his planes were at attacking ships at sea, Wolfram von Richthofen (fourth cousin of the Red Baron) reported to his friend Göring that protecting an invasion fleet from the Royal Navy would be beyond them.

And what about the evidence that German commanders assumed the crucial first wave would cross the Channel at night and emerge from the sea soon after dawn. As Grossadmiral Raeder pointed out, if the Luftwaffe found it difficult to hit ships in daylight, it would have had no chance at night, particularly with its own flotilla mixed up among the Royal Navy’s warships.

#02 A battle for air superiority? - Ep 2 Who really won the Battle of Britain?

The German pilots were trying to prevent an invasion
What?

Joachim von Ribbentrop with Hitler

A puppet ruler

In the summer of 1940, Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, was trying to persuade Hitler to invade Britain.

Ribbentrop had been the German Ambassador to London in the 1930s and had had a well-publicised affair with Wallace Simpson, before she began her relationship with the Prince of Wales, who in 1936 abdicated the British throne and the next year married her. In 1940 von Ribbentrop hatched a plan, codenamed Operation Willi, to offer the pro-Nazi Duke the possibility of restoring him to the British throne as a puppet ruler.

Air Force chief, Hermann Göring, however refused to attend any meetings about the invasion. As his British biographer Richard Overy points out, unlike the professional soldiers and admirals in charge of the army and navy, Göring was a politician and signed up to Hitler’s belief that Germany’s destiny was to invade the Soviet Union and build an eastern European empire. In fact in 1939 Göring had even tried secretly to negotiate peace with England. He tried again in June 1940. But the British were not interested.

Overy tells us that Göring was suspicious of politicians who had only joined Hitler after he had come to power, in 1933. In particular, Göring mistrusted von Ribbentrop. But by the summer of 1940 Ribbentrop’s reputation was riding high.

What Göring needed to do, in fact, was to make von Ribbentrop’s invasion of Britain unnecessary.

Herman Göring (left) in front of Hitler at Nazi Party rally Nuremberg 1929

The German generals trying to rule out an invasion

Göring needed to preclude an invasion of Britain. It would seriously dilute German forces and damage any chance of victory against the Soviet Union. Instead he proposed a massive strategic air attack that would on its own defeat the British, by forcing them to surrender. That would leave the German forces free to concentrate on the Nazi dream of conquering an Empire in Eastern Europe.

He was taking a calculated gamble. Having eliminated the RAF, he proposed, he would be able to bomb the British at liberty and within days or weeks they would come to terms. There would be no need for Ribbentrop’s impractical invasion. The majestic strength of the Royal Navy would be neutralized without Göring's planes sinking a single ship.

The German pilots the RAF was fighting in the Battle of Britain were not trying to clear the skies for an invasion. They were trying to prevent one ever being launched.

So why do the British cling tenaciously to the belief that the Battle of Britain 1940 was a desperate aerial struggle to prevent the Germans being able to launch an invasion across the Channel?

The answer lies in what was going on in Britain that summer and particularly in the mind of the new British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. As we'll see in Episode 3.

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