"Never has so much been owed by so many to so few." - Winston Churchill

I blog about many things in this space and one of them is the occasional historical event. This is one of those posts.

Yesterday was the 67th anniversary of the British victory in the Battle of Britain which lasted from August 11 through September 15, 1940.

An essential prerequisite to executing Operation Sea Lion, Hitler's plan to invade England, was achieving complete air superiority to protect the invasion fleet and to bomb rail junctions and marshaling areas to hinder the movement of British troops toward the landing zones.

Reichsmarschall Goering guaranteed to Hitler that the Luftwaffe would "wipe the British from the skies" in a matter of weeks. Instead, over a 26 day period, a relatively small group of hurriedly trained pilots flying Hurricane and Spitfire fighters, flew sortie after sortie against wave after wave of German bombers and their covering fighters.

Although a few railway junctions, bridges and buildings of non-military value such as three hospitals and Buckingham Palace, were hit, Fighter Command shot down 1,294 German aircraft losing 788 planes in the process.

Realizing that they were losing planes faster than they could be built and that air superiority over Britain was out of the question, Operation Sea Lion was canceled and Hitler turned his attention to an invasion of Russia.

Just as the Battle of Midway proved to be the turning point for World War II in the Pacific, the Battle of Britain marked the end of German expansion in Western Europe (the Battle of Stalingrad accomplished the same goal with respect to Eastern Europe).