Battle of Britain Day (15 September, 1940)

[HawkerHurricane]

http://www.bbm.org.uk/prog-scenes.htm

Never has so much been owed by so many to so few.

http://www.raf.mod.uk/bob1940/roll.html

http://www.raf.mod.uk/bob1940/background.html

[onager]

1. Kick!

:hi:

[Spider Jerusalem]

2. Indeed.

The RAF pilots in their Hurricanes and Spitfires broke the German air weapon and forced Hitler to turn East to continue his path of conquest; had Britain fallen in 1940, we'd likely be living in a very different world now. (Want to give a right-winger apoplexy? Explain that the British and the Soviets won WWII in Europe, and the US took the credit.)

[HawkerHurricane]

3. WW2 in Europe was won...

By a combinination of
British determination.
Russian Manpower.
And American Mass Production.
(That's the simplified version, yes.)

[onager]

4. That Osprey book in my first post...

...is part of a refreshing trend in writing history. Though I'm sure the right-wingers would call it "revisionist."

The (male) authors mention the initial attempts to keep women out of the war effort in Britain, except in traditional roles as nurses, canteen workers, etc.

They note that after "grudging" and sometimes hard-won acceptance, the government's own figures showed that women in traditional male jobs were meeting and in many cases exceeding pre-war, all-male production figures.

This was especially true of organizations like the Women's Land Army, who did heavy agricultural work, and their ax-carrying sisters, the Women's Timber Corps (or "Timber Jills"). Many of the WLA "Land Girls" were city dwellers who didn't know one end of a tractor from the other when they started.