THE extraordinary courage of “the Few”, the Battle of Britain fighter pilots who protected the country from the might of the Luftwaffe, and stopped a full-scale invasion by Germany, remains one of the great stories of the Second World War.

However, three military historians have claimed that it was not the gallant Spitfire and Hurricane fighter pilots who saved the country from Hitler’s invading forces in the autumn of 1940, but the Royal Navy.

It was not air power but sea power that dissuaded Hitler from invading Britain in an operation codenamed Sealion, the eminent lecturers at the Armed Forces Joint Services Command Staff College have told History Today magazine.

Operation Sealion would have attempted to land 160,000 soldiers along 40 miles of coastline in southeast England, using 2,000 barges. But the sea invasion was postponed to enable the Luftwaffe to try to destroy the RAF.

This led to the Battle of Britain and Churchill’s subsequent, famous tribute to the RAF pilots: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

After the RAF won the war of the skies, Hitler abandoned his invasion plans on October 12, 1940. However, four weeks before the 66th anniversary of Battle of Britain Day, Andrew Gordon, head of maritime history at the staff college, has given a different perspective on why Hitler changed his mind.

He told Brian James, author of the article, Pie in the Sky?: “I cheered like crazy at the film of the Battle of Britain [Reach for the Sky], like everyone else. But it really is time to put away this enduring myth. To claim that Germany failed to invade in 1940 because of what was done by the phenomenally brave and skilled young men of Fighter Command is hogwash.”

He added: “The Germans stayed away because while the Royal Navy existed they had not a hope in hell of capturing these islands. The Navy had ships in sufficient numbers to have overwhelmed any invasion fleet; destroyers’ speed alone would have swamped the barges by their wash.”

Christina Goulter, air warfare historian at the staff college, added: “While it would be wrong to deny the contribution of Fighter Command . . . it was the Navy that held the Germans from invading.”

Dr Goulter added: “The Battle of Britain was a formative experience for the RAF, like Waterloo for the Army [and] Trafalgar for the Navy, a sacrosanct event. This is why there is more than a modicum of hostility to any suggestion of re-examining this history. The single-seater fighter pilots of today see themselves as inheriting the mantle of the Few.”

Gary Sheffield, the staff college’s land warfare historian, agreed that the Navy was the main stumbling block to a successful German invasion.

Their views were criticised yesterday by one of the Battle of Britain pilots, Air Commodore Peter Brothers, who told The Times: “I’m afraid that the Royal Navy would have had a thin time if there had been no Battle of Britain. The German air force would have done what the Japanese did in Singapore. The Germans had Stuka dive-bombers that would have made mincemeat of the Navy.”

Air Commodore Brothers, chairman of the Battle of Britain Fighter Association, added: “The Battle of Britain dissuaded Hitler from invading. The battle was won by the people, firstly by radar, secondly by those who made the ammunition and aircraft, thirdly by the ground crews and fourthly by the pilots who flew them.”

Peter Furtado, editor of History Today, said: “There is absolutely no intention of denigrating the exceptional efforts of the Battle of Britain pilots. But all the historians are trying to do is to put their efforts into a wider context. Churchill created the myth of the Few for his own reasons.”

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