The Battle of Britain: The Battle Was Won Before the First Spitfire Took Off

When most people picture the Battle of Britain, they see Spitfires and Hurricanes twisting through the summer sky, Messerschmitts diving through the clouds and the white cliffs of Dover far below. It is an image that has become almost inseparable from the story of 1940.

But before the pilots ever saw one another, another battle was already being fought.

In radar stations along the coast, in telephone exchanges, underground operations rooms and cramped plotting rooms, hundreds of men and women were watching the skies. They listened to reports, moved markers across maps, answered telephones, calculated positions and passed orders.

Somewhere in southern England, a pilot might be sitting beside his Hurricane or Spitfire when the order comes through: scramble.

The warning may have arrived before anyone on the ground could see a German aircraft. Radar operators have detected the approaching formation, the information has been passed through the operations room and a controller has ordered a squadron into the air.

The response has to be fast. Engines are started, pilots climb into their cockpits and ground crews clear the way. Within minutes, the fighters are airborne and climbing towards an enemy that is still some distance away.

By the time German pilots finally see the RAF fighters, those fighters have not simply happened to be there. They have been sent there deliberately, guided by information gathered before the enemy was ever visible from the ground.

The Battle Britain Was Preparing For

By the summer of 1940, Britain faced a terrifying problem. The German Luftwaffe was larger than RAF Fighter Command and had enormous experience from the campaigns in Poland, Norway and France.

Britain could not simply keep hundreds of fighters permanently in the air waiting for German aircraft to appear.

The pilots would become exhausted. Aircraft would consume fuel. Engines would wear out. And Britain simply did not have enough fighters to waste them on patrols over empty skies.

Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding, the commander of Fighter Command, had spent the years before the war developing another solution.

It was a system in which radar, observation, communications, plotting and fighter control were brought together.

Later it became known as the Dowding System.

It was, in effect, an early warning and command network designed to answer one crucial question:

Where is the enemy, and where should we send our fighters?

Seeing the Enemy Before the Pilots Could

Along Britain's coastline stood the tall towers of the Chain Home radar network.

The equipment was primitive by modern standards, but revolutionary for its time. Radar operators could detect formations of aircraft approaching Britain from across the Channel and determine information such as their range, bearing and height.

The system could provide warning from many miles away - sometimes before anyone on the ground could see an aircraft at all.

Imagine the scene.

There is no dogfight.

There are no aircraft visible in the sky.

The English countryside below is apparently peaceful.

Inside a radar station, however, an operator is staring at a screen.

A trace appears.

Perhaps it is faint. Perhaps its size and direction are still uncertain. But it is something.

The operator reports it.

A telephone rings.

The information moves through the system.

In an operations room, a plotter places a marker onto a huge map.

Another telephone rings.

A controller studies the growing picture.

And somewhere on an airfield, men begin running towards their aircraft.

The enemy has not yet been seen from the ground.

But the RAF is already preparing to meet them.

The Women Behind the Map

One of the most remarkable parts of the system was the number of people involved in turning a radar signal into a fighter interception.

The Women's Auxiliary Air Force, or WAAF, played an important role. WAAFs worked as radar operators, plotters, tellers and in other jobs within Fighter Command's operations rooms and filter centres.

Their work could be intensely demanding.

In the plotting rooms, information was constantly changing. New reports arrived. Existing tracks moved across the map. Aircraft changed direction. Formations split apart or joined together.

The map therefore never really stopped moving.

A marker represented an aircraft formation that was somewhere in the sky outside.

The person moving that marker might never see the aircraft themselves.

Yet their accuracy could help determine whether a squadron of RAF fighters met that formation at the right place and at the right altitude.

There was little room for mistakes. A wrong report, a misplaced plot or a delayed message could send fighters towards empty skies while the German formation passed elsewhere. Repeated failures could leave Britain's limited fighter force out of position, allowing the Luftwaffe to gain control of the skies over southern England.

The consequences were enormous. If Fighter Command could not find and intercept the German raids, the RAF risked losing the air battle - and with it, the ability to defend Britain from the invasion that Hitler was preparing.

The Observer Corps: When Radar Lost Sight

Radar was not perfect.

Once German aircraft crossed the coastline and moved inland, the Chain Home stations could no longer provide the complete picture. The system therefore relied on another remarkable organisation: the Observer Corps.

Around 30,000 civilian volunteers worked from roughly 1,000 observation posts around Britain. They watched the skies, identified aircraft where possible and reported their movements.

Some of those wartime observation posts have survived, although most have disappeared or been replaced. A few can still be found around Britain today, sometimes alongside the later underground posts used by the Royal Observer Corps during the Cold War.

They are often surprisingly modest structures - a far cry from the dramatic radar towers along the coast. Yet from these exposed positions, volunteers spent hours watching the sky, identifying aircraft and passing their reports into the telephone network that helped direct Britain's fighter defences.

They were looking for the aircraft that radar could no longer follow effectively.

A formation passing overhead might be nothing more than a collection of tiny shapes against the sky.

But to an observer trained to recognise aircraft, its direction, altitude and formation could provide valuable information.

That information was fed back into the system.

Radar saw the approaching raid.

Observers helped follow it over land.

Plotters turned reports into a constantly changing picture.

Controllers decided what to do with it.

A Raid Begins - Before Anyone Sees a German Aircraft

Take a major raid such as those mounted against Britain during September 1940.

On 15 September, later known as Battle of Britain Day, the Luftwaffe launched two major daylight attacks against London.

The first warning did not come from a frightened civilian looking into the sky.

It came from radar.

That morning, radar stations began reporting large concentrations building up across the Channel. At around 10:50am, Rye radar reported a concentration of more than twenty aircraft south-east of Boulogne, while further plots appeared. At Fighter Command's 11 Group headquarters at Uxbridge, Air Vice-Marshal Keith Park was soon aware that something major was developing.

The German aircraft were still some distance away.

But the British response had already begun.

Information was passed through the Fighter Command network and into the Group and Sector operations rooms.

On the great plotting tables, the German formations began to take shape.

The controllers now had something that was almost as valuable as extra aircraft:

time.

Not much time.

But enough.

Enough to decide which squadrons should be scrambled.

Enough for pilots to start their engines.

Enough for aircraft to climb.

Enough to put fighters somewhere near the path of the approaching raid.

The German bomber crews were still flying towards Britain.

The British fighters were already coming towards them.

Then the Fighters Appear

Eventually, the pilots saw one another.

This is the moment that has dominated the popular memory of the Battle of Britain.

Spitfires and Hurricanes.

Messerschmitt Bf 109s.

Bombers beneath their fighter escorts.

Gunfire.

Contrails.

Aircraft breaking formation and diving towards the Channel.

But what the pilot experienced as a sudden encounter had actually been the final stage of a much longer process.

The pilot was the visible end of the system.

Behind him were radar operators, observers, telephone engineers, plotters, controllers, mechanics and ground crews.

The Spitfire might have been the weapon.

But the system had helped decide where that weapon would be used.

The Men Who Kept the Fighters Flying

There was another part of the system that is easy to overlook.

Aircraft had to be kept in the air.

A pilot could be scrambled only if his aircraft was ready.

Mechanics and ground crews worked constantly to refuel, rearm, inspect and repair fighters. Damaged aircraft had to be made serviceable again whenever possible.

A fighter sitting on an airfield with a damaged engine was of no use to a controller looking at a raid approaching the coast.

The people working around the aircraft were therefore part of the air defence system too.

So were the telephone engineers and communications staff who kept the information moving.

So were the controllers who had to decide when to commit scarce squadrons.

So were the WAAFs moving markers across the maps.

So were the civilian observers standing on rooftops and in observation posts.

And, of course, there were the pilots.

The few who actually climbed into the sky and faced the enemy.

The Luftwaffe Had the Aircraft - But Not the Whole Picture

The Germans were not unaware that Britain possessed radar.

They knew about the existence of the British RDF system before the war. What they failed to appreciate fully was how deeply radar had been integrated into the entire British fighter-control network.

That distinction mattered.

Radar on its own was not going to win the Battle of Britain.

Its real power came from what happened to the information afterwards.

A radar operator could detect a formation.

A telephone network could carry the report.

Plotters could display it.

Controllers could interpret it.

A squadron could be scrambled.

Ground crews could get aircraft into the air.

And pilots could then be directed towards the enemy.

It was the combination that mattered.

The RAF Museum describes the Dowding System as the most advanced and comprehensive air-defence system of its time.

The Luftwaffe also made another crucial mistake. German attacks on radar stations initially demonstrated that the British radar network was vulnerable. But after repeated attacks failed to put the stations permanently out of action, the Germans shifted their attention elsewhere. Hermann G�ring eventually questioned the value of continuing attacks on the radar chain.

The importance of that decision is difficult to overstate.

The Luftwaffe had attacked part of the machine.

But it did not fully understand what the machine was doing.

The Battle of Britain Was Not Just a Battle of Aircraft

It is tempting to measure the Battle of Britain in aircraft.

How many Spitfires?

How many Hurricanes?

How many Messerschmitts?

How many bombers?

But Britain's advantage was not simply found in the number or performance of its aircraft.

It was found in the ability to use a limited number of fighters intelligently.

Fighter Command could not afford to have its pilots flying around aimlessly all day waiting for the Luftwaffe to appear.

Instead, the system tried to give them the information they needed before they entered the fight.

The result was that Britain did not have to match German strength aircraft for aircraft everywhere.

It could concentrate its fighters where the threat was greatest.

That was the real advantage.

The Few - and the Many

The phrase "The Few" became immortal.

And rightly so.

The young men who climbed into Hurricanes, Spitfires, Defiants and other fighters faced extraordinary danger. Many were killed. Others were wounded or forced to bail out over Britain or the Channel.

But the famous Few were only the visible part of the story.

Behind every pilot stood "The Many" a remarkable chain of people.

• Radar operators watching for the first sign of an approaching raid.
• WAAF plotters and tellers turning reports into a constantly changing picture.
• Observer Corps volunteers following aircraft once they crossed inland.
• Controllers deciding which squadrons should be sent into action.
• Telephone and communications staff keeping information moving between stations.
• Mechanics and ground crews keeping fighters armed, fuelled and serviceable.
• Aircraft factory workers producing replacement fighters and repairing damaged machines.
• The pilots who finally took the aircraft into the sky.

Remove any one part and the system becomes weaker.

Remove enough of them and the Spitfire sitting on the runway becomes little more than a beautiful machine waiting for an enemy nobody has yet found.

The Battle Before the Battle

That is perhaps the best way to understand the Battle of Britain.

The famous dogfights were real. The courage of the pilots was real. The Spitfires, Hurricanes and Messerschmitts really did meet above southern England.

But many of those encounters had begun long before the pilots saw each other.

They began with a faint trace on a radar screen.

A telephone call.

A marker placed on a map.

A controller making a decision.

A WAAF plotter moving a block across a table.

A mechanic closing an engine panel.

A pilot climbing into his cockpit.

And somewhere far across the Channel, German aircraft were still flying towards Britain, unaware that they had already been detected.

The Battle of Britain may be remembered as the moment when the Few took to the skies.

But before the first fighter fired its guns, Britain had already built something that gave those Few a chance.

A system that could see the enemy coming, decide where he was going, and put Britain's limited fighter force in the right place to meet him.

The pilots won the battles in the sky.

But they did not fight alone.

Through Sebastian's Eyes: A Fictional Diary Entry From the Battle of Britain

Disclaimer: The following diary entry is entirely fictional and written to help readers imagine what the Battle of Britain may have felt like for those living through it. Sebastian is a fictional time-travelling narrator, but the events, technology and experiences described are based on the real historical circumstances of 1940.

Who is Sebastian? Sebastian is our fictional time-travelling narrator who witnesses major historical events. In this story, he finds himself in southern England during the Battle of Britain, observing the people and events surrounding Britain's air defence.

Diary of Sebastian - Southern England, 1940

September 15th, 1940

I had expected the Battle of Britain to begin with the roar of aircraft.

Instead, it began with a telephone ringing.

I was standing inside the operations room when the first reports came through.

There were no aircraft visible through the windows.

Nothing but an ordinary English morning.

Yet around the room, people were already moving.

A radar station had detected formations approaching across the Channel.

The information was passed by telephone.

On the great map, markers began to appear.

Women moved them carefully across the table as fresh reports arrived.

One formation became two.

Two became several.

A controller leaned over the map, studying the positions.

Then came the orders.

Somewhere nearby, engines were being started.

Pilots were running towards their aircraft.

For the men climbing into those cockpits, the enemy was still invisible.

But they were going to meet them.

That was the extraordinary thing.

The Germans were still approaching across the Channel, unaware that Britain already knew they were coming.

Then the telephones rang again.

More markers appeared.

More squadrons were being scrambled.

Within minutes, aircraft were climbing into the sky.

I thought about the men in those machines.

They were already on their way towards an enemy they had not yet seen.

For them, the battle would soon become Spitfires and Hurricanes against Messerschmitts.

For the people in this room, it was maps, telephones, calculations and decisions.

And for the civilians below, I suspected it would be something else entirely.

Fear.

Suddenly there was a tremendous noise outside.

I went towards the window.

High above us, aircraft were crossing the sky.

Someone pointed upwards.

"There they are."

I could see tiny specks against the blue.

Then I saw others.

They were not simply passing overhead.

They were closing on one another.

The RAF fighters had already been sent into the sky and were now moving towards the approaching German formation.

For a few moments I could make out little more than dots and trails of white vapour.

Then the formations seemed to break apart.

One aircraft turned sharply.

Another dived.

There was a sudden burst of smoke.

Someone beside me shouted that a German aircraft had been hit.

I watched, completely helpless.

From this distance there was something almost beautiful about it. The sunlight caught the aircraft as they turned and climbed.

Then I remembered what I was actually watching.

Men were inside those machines.

Some would not come home.

The sound of the engines and guns rolled across the sky.

And then, almost as quickly as it had begun, the formation disappeared towards the Channel.

I turned back towards the operations room.

The battle was not over.

The markers were still moving.

The telephones were still ringing.

More reports were arriving.

More fighters were being directed towards the next formation.

There was no cheering.

No celebration.

Only concentration.

I began to understand why the system mattered so much.

The people in that room could not see the battle.

The pilots could not see the map.

Yet the two were connected.

Every telephone call, every plotted position and every decision helped put a British fighter somewhere in the sky where it was needed.

And now, after watching the battle unfold above me, I understood something else.

We call them The Few.

But they were not alone.

Behind every aircraft in that sky was a chain of people who had helped put it there.

Radar operators.

Observers.

Plotters.

Controllers.

Mechanics.

Ground crews.

And the women and men who kept the whole system moving while the battle raged above their heads.

Tonight, I think I shall remember the sound of the telephones more than the sound of the guns.

Because the telephones were ringing before the battle began.

And they were still ringing when it was over.