War & Resistance

At the outbreak of World War Two, the German Luftwaffe was the largest and most sophisticated air force in the world. With the fall of France in mid-1940, Britain faced Germany alone across the English Channel. Nations of the Empire rallied to the support the ‘Mother Country’ as the air war over England intensified into a ‘blitz’ of bombing to force her to surrender.

The initial conflict in the air was between German twin-engined bombers escorted by swift and manoeuvrable single-engined ‘fighters’ for protection against the British fighters. This conflict was between the German Me109 and the Hurricanes and Spitfires of Britain. The failure of the Luftwaffe to subdue Britain through indiscriminate bombing was a lesson well understood by the British who developed a more effective bomber force to attack Germany and occupied Europe.

War in the Air: While Britain continued to produce more refined and innovative fighter aircraft, her twin-engined bombers were replaced by four-engined, well-armed bombers. The first was the Stirling carrying a large bomb load but limited to a ‘ceiling’ of around 20,000 feet making it vulnerable to fighters above it, and ‘flak’, anti-aircraft guns. Rather than scrap over a thousand aircraft as new bombers arrived, the British used the Stirling bombers as tugs for glider aircraft and clandestine warfare support.

Their place as a front-line bomber was taken by the Lancaster and Halifax bombers which were much faster, could carry greater bomb loads higher and further than any other bomber. They were supported with the arrival of American bombers, the B17 Flying Fortress and later the B24 Liberator, both formidable four-engined bombers.

The conflict became a combat of courage as only the bomber pilots had an armour-plated seat. The crew of a bomber was exposed to cannon and machine gun fire as the fuselage of their aircraft was only thin aluminium, even flaks shrapnel would penetrate the aircrafts skin. Their defence was their own multiple machine guns and the skill of their pilot to weave out of the line of fire from an enemy fighter.

The fighter pilots were at great risk too. They needed to avoid the combined fire from the machine guns of the bombers and all they had to protect them was, as Douglas Bader was reputed to say “I have an engine in front, armourplate behind and tin legs under me!” Regardless, combatants were in danger at all times of conflict in the air.

With British bombers operating at night, the Americans flew daylight raids which tested the strength of German fighters. It was eventually, a victory of the Allies as German industry and her cities were reduced to rubble, enabling the Allied victory after five years of intense destruction and great loss of life.