Battle Of Britain Day

[choux]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-stoke-staffordshire-58565502

[naomi24]

A well-earned place of honour.

[burlyshirley]

Great little planes.

[douglas9401]

A remarkable machine, certainly showed those Fokkers what was what.

[ichkeria]

Wasn't the role of the spitfire greatly exaggerated in the Battle of Britain, great though it was?

[Sqad]

The Hurricane had more "kills" than the Spitfire and Anti aircraft defence put together.
The former should have its place of honour by its own success.

[Stickybottle]

ichkeria
Wasn't the role of the spitfire greatly exaggerated in the Battle of Britain, great though it was?

Sort of yes and no
It is acknowledged that the Hurricane carried out the bulk of the work because there were more of them but I believe it was the superior air speed and manoeuvrability(tighter turning circle) of the Spitfire that gave the RAF pilots the better odds in a dogfight

[Stickybottle]

For me the silhouette alone of a Spitfire is the quintessential image of what a fighter aircraft is

[grumpy01]

Surely it isn't the planes that we should be talking about,although they were the "weapon" that allowed our pilots to defeat the Luftwaffe and win the Battle of Britain.We should be honouring the pilots themselves many not much older than schoolboys who were hardly old enough to drive a car who were really thrown"in at the deep end" and sadly many did not come through.

[vulcan42]

I think it was purely because the Spitfire was the dominate aircraft in the Battle of Britain that it became so popular. In fact the hurricane did more work in more areas over a longer period than the Spitfire.
For example, a small extract from an article in the Encyclopedia Britannica :
\\ Hurricanes were credited with shooting down more than 1,500 Luftwaffe aircraft in the critical first year of the war, a total barely exceeded by all other British aircraft combined.//

[choux]

grumpy, you are so right.

[naomi24]

https://bbm.org.uk/

[vulcan42]

Rightly so, we honour the pilots every year on the 15th of September. The fact remains that without the superior aircraft that we had, many more young pilots would have lost their lives. We were really fortunate in having the right men and the right machines at the right time.

[burlyshirley]

Just back from a dog walk and guess what - a Spitfire flew over ! I couldn't believe it, there must be an air show nearby, maybe this coming weekend. What a treat ..