Radar and excellent new fighters account for Britain's victory in the Battle of Britain.

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Radar and excellent new fighters account for Britain’s victory in the Battle of Britain.’ How far do you agree with this judgment?

Introduction

To many the Battle of Britain is synonymous with the Spitfire and Britain’s invention of radar all of which is demonstrated in the 1969 film of the same name. However I wish to show that these two factors only made a small part of the picture and in fact the real question was: did Germany ever have a chance of winning the Battle of Britain!

Validity of opening statement

At first glance, we can see that the Spitfire and Hurricane were two fighter planes which outperformed the ME109. They were faster, better to manoeuvre with a high firepower. Yet the pilots that flew these planes lacked greatly in experience in comparison to the Luftwaffe. As the battle progressed death of pilots would mean even more inexperienced ‘boys’ taking planes up.  Likewise Radar which had been developed greatly by the British did provide a good cover of British outer airspace and warn of incoming enemy. Yet when in British airspace enemy planes had to be observed by the observer corp. It seems quite clear therefore that these two factors alone could not have been the reason for British victory.

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Counter factors about RAF

Radar in fact made up part of a greater defence system known as the 'Dowding System' after Air Chief Marshal Sir , the leader of RAF Fighter Command.  Dowding's system began with early warning detection of incoming raids by . Radar stations codenamed  lined the coast, watching enemy raids form up over France and warning when they began to move. Raiders that penetrated the radar chain were picked up by the  which would track the raids visually from a network of ground posts. Reports from radar and observers were passed back to 'filtering stations' that ...

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