Right: Royal Air Force Boulton Paul Defiant Mk Is of No. 264 Squadron RAF including L7026 PS-V and N1535 PS-A based at Kirton-in-Lindsey, Lincolnshire, August 1940. Photograph in the Public Domain.

The War's early tragedies began for Great Britain in 1940, with air combat and bombing over the United Kingdom claiming 23,002 civilian deaths, and 32,138 civilians who were wounded. 1,542 Allied airmen (UK and Canada) lost their lives, while Germany's Luftwaffe lost 2,585 pilots and crew. "... on August 15, about a hundred bombers, with an escort of forty ME. 110's, were launched against Tyneside. At the sametime a raid of more than eight hundred planes was sent to pin down our forces in the South, where it was thought they were already all gathered." (Churchill, 1959, p. 359)

Left: Fire fighting during WWII Battle of Britain. Firemen at work in bomb-damaged street in London, after Saturday night raid, ca. 1941. Photograph licensed to War History Network.

"August 15 was the largest air battle of this period of the war; five major actions were fought, on a front of five hundred miles. It was indeed a crucial day. In the South all our twenty-two squadrons were engaged, many twice, some three times, and the German losses, added to those in the North, were seventy-six to thirty-four. This was a recoginisable disaster to the German Air Force." (Churchill, 1959, p. 359)

Right: London, 28 September 2017: Memorial to the Battle of Britain pilots from Fighter Command. Photograph licensed to War History Network 2022.

"This same period (August 24-September 6) had seriously drained the strength of Fighter Command as a whole. The Command had lost in this fortnight 103 pilots killed and 128 seriously wounded, while 466 Spitfires and Hurricanes had been destroyed or seriously damaged. (Chruchill, 1959, p. 361)

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