My Sunday column

The Stuka dive bombers that attacked England in the summer of 1940 didn’t have the Jericho Trumpets (sirens) which had terrified thousands of continental Europeans in the earliest days of the German blitzkrieg.
But the Stukas did have 500-pound bombs with which their crews expected to blast England to its knees and quickly end the conflict which later grew into World War II.
Today many people assume that the outcome of the 1939-1945 war was a given, that no matter what the cost, the Allies were destined to win. And in the United States we have an unfortunate tendency to diminish the role played by our allies.
But at the end of the war, no nation stood taller than Winston Churchill’s England. And England’s finest hourly truly came in the summer months of 1940.
Let me set the scene.
The continent was controlled by Germany. The Allies had expected to hold the line in France, much as they had in World War I, while mobilizing their forces as rapidly as possible.
But the inventive German offensive, coupled with a collapse in will of the French government, led to a rapid and stunning victory that chased England completely off the continent. The defeat shocked the fledgling Churchill government and brought about the very real prospect of a German invasion of the British Isles.
At first Hitler proceeded cautiously, apparently in hopes that the British would return to the bargaining table. But as it became increasingly evident that the Churchill government would carry on the war, Hitler made the decision to unleash his vaunted Luftwaffe.
Hitler and Luftwaffe boss Herman Goering devised a plan to destroy British air defenses, thus giving the Germans control of the skies and clearing the way for a cross-channel invasion.
Hitler and Goering were right to launch their air offensive, but among their later errors of judgment was one huge mistake — they underestimated their foe’s willingness and ability to fight.
The ill-prepared British Army had been beaten soundly in France and was last seen desperately fleeing the continent at Dunkirk.
But the Royal Air Force was another matter.
The RAF fighter pilots who took to the skies to battle the Germans were a brave crowd. What’s more, they were well organized and well led. They knew the crucial importance of their task and rose to the occasion in the best tradition of the English fighting man.
“England expects that every man will do his duty,” Admiral Nelson said at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.
England asked the same of its flyboys in 1940 and was not disappointed.
It didn’t hurt that the Brits benefited enormously from two technological advantages.
First, the world’s first early warning radar system installed all along the coast, though far from perfected, gave the British a huge tactical boost. Roughly speaking, they knew where and when the German planes would arrive over British soil.
Second, in the Supermarine Spitfire and the Hawker Hurricane the Brits had two lethal fighter planes.
Yet the advantage that mattered most to RAF, according to the fine book “With Wings Like Eagles” by Michael Korda, was the leadership of Air Chief Marshall Hugh Dowding, who did a masterful job of building up the nation’s air defenses in the face of fierce internal politics in the British High Command.
The eccentric Dowding was a “my way or the highway” leader, utterly convinced that his theories on fighting the Germans were the only option for successful defense.
While this attitude eventually ended his career in the service, at the time he was needed most — in those bloody, frightful days of the German Blitz — Dowding’s leadership and tactics proved invaluable.
Time and again the Luftwaffe leadership convinced itself that the RAF was spent, but each time the Brits fought back ferociously. And it was not just pilots in the air. Thousands of military personnel and civilian volunteers — men and women — worked diligently and often heroically in completing the thousand tasks which stitched together led to an improbable and astounding victory.
Due to those efforts, there was no invasion of England. Hitler shelved his plans and fatefully turned his attention to the Russian Bear.
Though still early in the war, Churchill sensed the historic importance of what the RAF had accomplished.
“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few,” the British leader said.
Sixty-nine years later, on a beautiful summer day in Dalton, Ga., USA, those fine words still ring gloriously true.

Jimmy Espy is executive editor of The Daily Citizen. He blogs at Espysoutpost.blogspot.com