How can you welcome to Dan Snow's history? It is the 15th of September in this podcast

as well as broadcast and that means it is battle of Britain day. It's the day on which

a particularly large scale battle took place between fleets of German fighters and bombers

and British interceptors over London in particular.

The Luftwaffe launched its largest and most concentrated attack of the battle of Britain

so far against London in the hope of drawing out the RAF and the hope of teasing out what

they thought were those last few fighters and annihilating them. It's that classic German

doctrine of the lander in the air, seek decisive battles, seek battles for annihilation.

With the RAF destroyed, then Britain could be brought to its knees forced to a political

compromise or perhaps invaded before the autumn weather made that impossible.

Some like 1500 aircraft in all took part in the battle, making one of the largest aerials

battles at that point in history. Around 60 German aircraft were destroyed, 20 so were

very badly damaged and they lost over 100 air crew killed, captured and wounded. It was

simply too high a price to pay for the German Luftwaffe and a day or two later Hitler formally

postponed his invasion of Britain and his thoughts were already turning to the east 1941

and his great showdown with Stalin's Russia. Britain would live to fight another day.

To mark this anniversary I'm going to replay one of the old podcasts way back from the

archive I haven't had this one for years. It's very special because it's an interview

with Tom Neal, aka Ginger Neal. He won two distinguished flying crosses in the second

marble. He was one of the last of the few. He was an ace who fought in the battle of

Britain and he became something about spokesman for the pilots of Fighter Command, the few.

I'll be posting pictures of his logbook later on my social media fees. So check out the

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