[narrator] The fate of Western Europe hangs in the balance.
Wave after wave of Nazi bombers head for London.
[rapid gunfire]
[narrator] Hitler believes Britain is on its knees.
[Bungay] Intelligence reports were coming through
that the British must be down to their last 200 fighters.
[narrator] The RAF scramble every available fighter
to defend the capital city.
It will be a battle to the death.
You had to be a killer.
You had to have that killer instinct.
[Wellum] You open fire at 200 yards,
by the time you've finished, you were breaking away at 50 feet.
[narrator] If the Nazis defeat the RAF...
a seaborne invasion of the British Isles can begin.
The Battle of Britain is one of the most heroic clashes
of World War II.
Now, rare footage from around the world, expertly restored in full color,
tells the story as you've never seen it before.
[narrator] 10th May 1940.
Hitler shocks the world by launching blitzkrieg attacks
against the Netherlands, Belgium, and France.
[explosions]
[narrator] Mobile panzer divisions sweep all before them...
with close aerial support from the German Air Force,
the Luftwaffe.
The Luftwaffe is seen very much as the kind of spearhead of blitzkrieg.
[engines droning]
Psychologically, it seems all powerful.
There are Stukas that dive down with banshee wailing sirens,
bringing terror and mayhem.
[narrator] As the crisis unfolds,
Winston Churchill is appointed British Prime Minister.
British troops sent to France to protect their last remaining ally in Europe
are forced into a humiliating retreat.
The shock of the defeat is absolutely enormous,
and the British Expeditionary Force finds itself cornered
against the one surviving channel port, which is Dunkirk.
[narrator] Despite a miraculous evacuation...
the German war machine appears unstoppable.
Britain and her empire stand alone against Hitler's armies.
But Hitler, long an admirer of Britain, is unsure about a potential invasion.
[Levine] The Nazis, I think, were astonished
to have taken France as quickly as they did.
It kind of left Hitler with a problem: what to do next.
Hitler's long-term plan was always to go after the Soviet Union.
He was quite happy to make peace with Britain.
Effectively, he would be offering the British immunity from invasion.
[narrator] Some members of Churchill's war cabinet
continued to push for a deal with Hitler.
But the Prime Minister stands firm.
Churchill refused to negotiate.
He refused to parley. "I will not talk to that man," he said.
Churchill's attitude to Hitler is that once you open the door,
even just a crack, it then blows wide open.
Let's just step back,
get over the shock of this terrible defeat that's happened.
[Churchill] The battle of France is over.
I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin.
Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island
or lose the war.
One thing Churchill understood about the British people
is that they were quite sleepy by disposition.
And not only did Churchill galvanize everybody,
he kept alive the threat of invasion.
[Churchill] We shall fight on the beaches.
We shall fight on the landing grounds.
We shall fight in the fields...
and in the streets. We shall fight in the hills.
We shall never surrender.
Churchill's genius in 1940 was that he first persuaded
the British people that they could do something amazing,
and then persuaded them afterwards that they had done something amazing.
[narrator] Churchill's priority is to stop an invasion.
With France now under German control,
his immediate concern is that the German Navy
will soon have the large French fleet at their disposal.
So he reluctantly instructs the Royal Navy to sink the main French fleet,
anchored on the coast of Algeria.
One thousand three hundred French servicemen are killed.
Churchill calls the attack on a former ally
his most hateful decision.
But the French fleet can play no part in a German invasion.
Hitler is undeterred.
For Hitler, the army is absolutely everything.
He completely fails to realize that the senior service in Great Britain
is not the air force or the army, it's the Royal Navy.
He doesn't understand his enemy.
[narrator] But the attack sends a clear message.
Britain is prepared to fight.
Hitler's hopes for a deal now seem unlikely.
He knows that Churchill won't negotiate,
unless he thinks a German invasion is a real possibility.
And while the Royal Navy controls the seas,
Hitler's air force controls the skies.
The all-conquering Luftwaffe can attack naval convoys in the channel...
crippling Britain's supply lines
and drawing out the enemy air force, the RAF.
The Luftwaffe was probably the most formidable air force
in the world at the time.
It outnumbered the RAF in terms of frontline strength by about two to one.
[narrator] Air fields are hastily constructed in France
to launch medium-range German bombers.
They will be protected by fighter planes...
including the formidable Messerschmitt 109.
[Holland] The Messerschmitt 109,
the single engine fighter plane is, without question,
the best in the world in the summer of 1940.
It can climb faster than any other plane.
When it gets into the battle area, it can pack a bigger punch.
It's got 55 seconds worth of machine gun fire,
and it's got cannons as well.
[narrator] Luftwaffe commander-in-chief, Hermann Göring,
orders his forces to close the channel to British shipping.
The flamboyant Göring is a former World War I fighter ace...
and arguably, the closest person to Hitler.
He also has notorious taste for the finer things in life.
[Holland] Göring is the one Nazi who really enjoys the trappings of power.
While he should have been really focusing on the job in hand,
he's wandering around art galleries buying up art.
[narrator] Göring promises Hitler that in just four days,
his air fleets will overcome British defenses in the South,
and destroy the entire RAF in four weeks.
The Germans were enormously arrogant.
They simply believed that if they threw an air force
as strong as theirs,
Britain was going to be destroyed by a single knockout blow.
[narrator] 10th July 1940.
Fighting over the channel reaches a new intensity,
when 60 German bombers attack a large convoy in The Channel.
The Battle of Britain has begun.
But as the British ships come into view,
the pilots see something none of them were expecting.
Five squadrons of the RAF's Fighter Command
are already there to meet them.
It was as if the British had known they were coming.
Leading the head-on charge is the one plane
that the Luftwaffe pilots fear...
Supermarine Spitfire.
[Bronk] The Spitfire was something which the Germans had only experienced
as a combat adversary over Dunkirk,
where it came as a bit of a shock because for the first time,
this was a fighter capable of meeting the Messerschmitt 109E
on relatively equal terms.
The Spitfire was a glamorous aircraft.
It has a beauty and a charisma, and it caught everybody's imagination.
[narrator] The German bombers sink one solitary British ship...
but lose ten aircraft.
The Luftwaffe have learned an important lesson.
But Göring's intelligence services don't want to hear it.
[Bungay] The person running the Air Force Intelligence Agency
was a man called Beppo Schmid.
He ignored the defense system
which was crucial in enabling Britain to defend itself from the air.
He started to encourage the belief that the Luftwaffe could win.
[narrator] Schmid tells Göring that the Luftwaffe's fighters
are superior to Britain's and they can produce them quicker.
Schmid's biggest problem
was that he essentially was always telling Göring,
what Göring wanted to hear.
He wasn't really interested in finding out the truth.
[Holland] Basically, he just concocts a crock of lies.
It is all based on the flimsiest of intelligence.
And the picture that Beppo Schmid presents to Göring
is one that is entirely inaccurate.
[narrator] Göring's conviction that the Luftwaffe can defeat the RAF...
plays a key part in Hitler's decision to intensify the threat of occupation.
On 16th July, Hitler issued a directive to start Operation Sea Lion.
To begin preparations, and if necessary, to carry out
an invasion across the channel of the British Isles.
He said that he was preparing this
because the British were failing to come to terms.
[narrator] Germany prepares for invasion.
River barges mass on the French coast.
They are converted into landing craft that will transport
nearly half a million men across The Channel.
Paratroopers start training for air drops on key targets.
But Hitler is still hoping that Churchill will come to his senses
and sue for peace.
On 19th July, Hitler warns Britain to negotiate or meet the consequences.
Hitler said: "Make peace with me and everything will be fine between us.
You've been very foolish, Britain, to come up against me.
When I went after Poland, it was really nothing to do with you.
You didn't have to come after me."
[narrator] Within an hour of the end of the speech,
the offer is rejected by Britain.
[speaking in German]
[narrator] It's clear to Hitler that Churchill has to learn
just how real the German threat is.
[crowds singing]
Shortly afterwards, Hitler issued another directive
asking the Luftwaffe to intensify the air war against Britain
in order to gain air superiority over the landing beaches
and to make the threat of Sea Lion that much more credible.
[narrator] Hitler says Britain's position is hopeless.
The war is won. By us.
August 1940.
Hitler tells Göring to lay the groundwork
for the total destruction of Britain's fighter defenses.
An operation they codename, Eagle Day.
The Luftwaffe is to bomb RAF airfields southeast of London.
Over half of all RAF Fighter Command's planes are based there.
On August 13th, Eagle Day dawns.
Within hours surely, the RAF Fighter Command's ability
to resist the Luftwaffe will be destroyed.
[Bronk] Eagle Day is a series of massed attacks on key airfields
in 11 Group in the South of England.
Multiple waves of bombers, designed to knock out
Fighter Command's ability to continue to generate sorties
in the Far Southeast, to then slowly roll the RAF
further and further inland,
so that the Luftwaffe could establish their superiority over the channel.
[narrator] But reports come through of bad weather ahead.
Göring decides to postpone the attack.
On Eagle Day, some people got the order to cancel and turn back.
Some people got the order to cancel too late
and some people never got it at all.
The final order to launch it in earnest only went out
at about two o'clock in the afternoon.
[narrator] As the German bombers arrive at the British coast,
the response from the RAF fighters is swift, deadly
and a total shock to the incoming Luftwaffe.
[engines droning]
[narrator] This wasn't the easy victory Hitler had been promised.
Forty-seven German planes are shot down
and 86 pilots killed, missing or captured.
[Bungay] The losses on Eagle Day
amounted to something that was rather chastening for the Luftwaffe.
The dive bombers, which had appeared to be invincible in France,
were in fact, extremely vulnerable
when subjected to the attentions of coherent fighter defense.
[interviewer] Are you all right? Did you get any of the blighters?
Yes, I got a Messerschmitt 109 and a Dornier.
[narrator] The Germans had been dangerously over confident.
Each of the armed services had been told to prepare for the occupation, separately.
[Holland] What's the Luftwaffe's plans?
"Well, Luft plans are, we're just gonna destroy the RAF."
You know, there's no sense of co-ordination whatsoever.
Hitler is in the Alps. I mean, that's sort of-- that's like Churchill
going to a sort of mountain retreat in Scotland
while all this is going on. It's spectacularly unhelpful.
It's just arrogant.
And it completely reveals his total inability
to understand his enemy.
[narrator] The Germans are also unaware
that the British have developed sophisticated advanced warnings,
known as the Dowding system.
[Holland] Stuffy Dowding is the Commander in Chief of Fighter Command.
It is he who has overseen the development of this
fully coordinated air defense system.
The world has just not seen anything like this before.
[narrator] At the heart of the defenses is Chain Home,
twenty-one 360-foot radar masts on the southern and eastern coasts,
that can detect aircraft up to 120 miles away.
If German planes fly below their sights,
thirty smaller masts known as Chain Home Low will spot them.
[Bungay] Principles of radar were well understood
by the Germans who had radar of their own.
What they did not understand
was the way in which radar had been embodied
in an air defense system.
[narrator] Once German planes are within sight of Britain,
thirty thousand volunteers man observation posts day and night...
Sighting enemy aircraft over the channel, flying due west.
[narrator] ...tracking and reporting enemy raids.
Radar can give you warning of a formation, but it can't give you any sense
of height or size, so then that's supplemented
by the observer corps who have interlocking posts
all around the coast of Britain and inland.
They had a pair of binoculars
and this piece of equipment called a pantograph
which looks a bit like a giant sextant.
And that would give them rough bearing, distance and height
for the formations they were looking at.
[narrator] In fact, reports of enemy raids arrive at Fighter Command headquarters
in under 40 seconds.
The heart of this is the filter room and the control room at Bentley Priory.
Bentley Priory is the headquarters of RAF Fighter Command.
The filter room is what filters the information
coming from the radar stations only.
The control room is the co-ordination of that information
from the filter room, from the radar station
and what is coming in from the observer corp.
[narrator] The Luftwaffe have no idea that the RAF know they are coming,
from the moment they're airborne above Northern France.
Hostile two, four, sugar.
[narrator] And their up-to-the-minute positions
are being fed directly to Fighter Command.
[indistinct chatter]
[aircraft engine revving]
[indistinct chatter]
[narrator] The British response in the Southeast
is under the command of one man...
Air Vice-Marshal Keith Park.
While the early German attacks had multiple leaders,
Park alone commands the 30 squadrons scattered across the Southeast.
As Eagle Day progresses,
some German bombers inevitably get through this defensive shield.
And several RAF airfields in Park's 11 Group are hit.
[shells whistling]
[telephones ringing]
[narrator] But the planned knockout of the RAF on Eagle Day...
turns into a drubbing for the Luftwaffe.
[engines droning]
[narrator] Compared to the 47 German losses,
the RAF lose just 13 fighters in aerial combat.
But Beppo Schmid gives Göring vastly inflated RAF losses,
claiming the Luftwaffe have downed 70 British planes.
Part of the problem clearly was the intelligence
that was going back to Göring.
Our old friend, Beppo Schmid, again, he was giving wildly inaccurate reports.
Göring wasn't getting a real picture of what was going on.
[narrator] Schmid also underestimates the speed
with which the RAF can repair planes and runways.
Engineers rush to get damaged aircraft back in the air.
Bomb craters in runways are quickly filled in.
Most RAF bases are fully operational again within 24 hours.
And British fighter planes are being built faster than ever.
[Holland] Aircraft production has been revamped,
and it's now working round the clock, uh, it has been streamlined.
In July 1940, Ministry of Aircraft Production
produces 496 brand new Spitfires and Hurricanes,
whereas the Luftwaffe only produce 240 brand new Messerschmitt 109's.
[narrator] Lord Beaverbrook, British minister of aircraft production,
introduces the Spitfire fund...
to raise money to build a plane the nation could rally behind.
[Levine] The public wanted to give money,
and not just in Britain, in-- all around the Commonwealth,
all around the world even, people wanted to donate
to create more of these beautiful objects.
[narrator] And because the aerial battles are now over British soil,
the RAF had another distinct advantage over the Luftwaffe.
[Bronk] Whilst Eagle Day does significant damage,
the numbers of aircraft lost on the ground doesn't translate into losses of pilots.
Those pilots, bit shaken but unless they are badly wounded
they'll just go straight back to the squadron
and be flying again even the next day, with a new aircraft.
[reporter] Valuable trained men were saved and ready to fight again,
but the crews of Göring's planes were lost to him forever.
[Bronk] For every aircraft lost for the Luftwaffe,
they tend to be a total loss of both crew and aircraft.
Those pilots were often quite a valuable source of intelligence.
[narrator] Air crew are interrogated,
and downed German planes comprehensively investigated.
On one Heinkel bomber, they find the code word "Knickebein"
written on a note.
Secretly recorded conversations reveal captured airmen
using the same phrase.
They learn that Knickebein, or "crooked leg" in English,
is a radio communications system
that allows bomber pilots to navigate in the dark.
It's an ominous development.
The Germans are planning to bomb Britain at night.
The Knickebein system transmitted a series of dots and dashes.
The pilots flew a center path between the two beams of dots and dashes.
So he knew that was the course to follow without having to recourse to maps.
No one ever thought the Germans would be developing a system
where you could actually navigate at night.
[Holland] There is a whole battle, a technological, scientific battle,
that is running concurrently with the main battle of Britain.
This is about night bombing rather than daylight bombing.
[narrator] Fighter Command's entire defense strategy
relies on spotters and pilots having clear sight of the enemy.
If the Germans start bombing at night,
British cities and industry will be practically defenseless.
Meanwhile, Göring has finally awoken to the reality
that the southeast of England is extremely well protected.
So, he changes strategy.
Perhaps, the rest of Britain will be more vulnerable.
[Bungay] On 15th August, they launched a maximum effort.
It was pretty obvious that the south of England was strongly defended
but it wasn't at all clear that the north would be.
The main raid went in over Yorkshire.
It was Heinkel 111s
escorted by the BF 110 twin-engine fighter.
[narrator] Over 2,000 Luftwaffe sorties are launched across Britain.
But Göring learns another painful lesson.
This time, 75 German planes are shot out of the sky.
The Luftwaffe call it "Black Thursday,"
Churchill, one of the greatest days in history.
The Dowding System is just as strong in the North as it is in the South.
It is at that point that the Germans discovered that the radar system
went all the way around the coast
and that they weren't just facing 11 Group and 10 Group
but there was 12 Group in the Midlands, and 13 Group in the North and Scotland.
[narrator] Göring's feared Stuka dive bombers
suffered the biggest losses.
So, he changed his plans once again.
The reason Stukas are getting decimated is because Stukas only work
when you have complete control of the airspace.
So, Göring started tinkering with tanks and saying to his fighter planes,
you know, "You need to close escort the bombers.
You need to do more escort work."
Which means there's more work for the fighters to do,
um, and also negates some of their strength.
[Bronk] This deprived them of their main advantage
which was speed and surprise.
Instead of cruising around at 300 miles an hour plus,
and therefore, almost by default having the advantage
over the RAF fighters at the start of any engagement,
the 109s were now tied down at about 200 and 250 miles an hour,
next to the bombers, at lower altitude.
This was a huge mistake on the part of Göring.
[narrator] The RAF losses 32 fighters on August 15th.
Planes and airfields can be easily repaired.
But the mental strain is mounting on pilots on both sides.
[Bronk] Life for the average RAF pilot during August,
is this sort of schizophrenic existence.
When they're on duty, they'll fly anywhere up to five or six trips a day.
They're incredibly intense.
This kind of intense combat.
And then, within half an hour, they're back down
sitting around dispersal, completely exhausted.
[narrator] The youngest Spitfire pilot to fight in the Battle of Britain,
Geoffrey Wellum, has his fighter training cut short,
so he can join the war effort.
[Wellum] Within ten-and-a-half months of leaving the cloistered existence
of a boarding school, I found myself in the frontline Spitfire Squadron.
There was a lot of just sitting around and dozing or waiting.
The tension of waiting in dispersal was something I shall never forget.
The moment the bell rang, you sort of...
tensed up.
You've clambered into your Spitfire. Once you're in the Spitfire,
and you could feel the engine vibrations beneath your seat, you know,
it was up to you, then.
[narrator] But once again, British airmen have the upper hand
over Luftwaffe pilots.
To be an airman in the Royal Air Force was a glamorous thing.
To be a pilot was still more glamorous. And to be a fighter pilot,
was absolutely at the top of the glamor tree.
One in five fighter pilots actually came from overseas.
You had French, you had Belgians, and you had a lot of Poles.
They would go drinking at night, they would come home, two hours sleep,
and off they would go and fly.
[Holland] A British pilot would go down to the local pub,
and they'd be welcomed as heroes,
whereas the German pilots, they just have to keep at it all the time.
In the evening, they're expected to discuss tactics, write up reports.
If they do get a little bit time off to go to a local bar,
they got a French barman kind of, eyeing them up suspiciously.
There's no pat on the back.
So, from a morale point of view, it is much tougher for the Luftwaffe.
[narrator] On August 16th, the Battle of Britain
finally sees the Luftwaffe score some successes.
Radar picks up mass Luftwaffe formations crossing The Channel
heading for the South Coast.
Eighty-four Stuka dive bombers,
protected by a staggering 214 Messerschmitt 109s
and 43 Messerschmitt 110s are heading to Southampton.
Eight British squadrons intercept raids on Portsmouth and Lee-on-Solent.
But Göring's new tactics work.
The RAF are overwhelmed by the fighter escorts,
leaving the Stuka bombers to wreak havoc.
[engines droning]
[narrator] Chain Home radar mast at Ventnor on the Isle of Wight,
is hit by 22 bombs.
It will be out of action for over a month.
A major Luftwaffe success.
And the RAF airbase of Tangmere is badly hit.
Ten servicemen are killed and hangars wrecked.
US airman, Billy Fiske, engages with the Luftwaffe,
is hit and his fuel tank catches fire.
He survives but later succumbs to his injuries.
This becomes the first official American casualty of World War II.
There are signs that the Luftwaffe is learning
how to bypass the RAF defenses.
One of the successes that the Luftwaffe had
was not by weight of bombs but by stealth.
Flying underneath the radar screen
proves to be more destructive than some of these large ones
going in at medium altitude.
[narrator] Then losses continue to mount.
On Sunday 18th August,
the date the RAF would later dub their hardest day,
Winston Churchill rallies the nation.
[Churchill] Never in the field of human conflict
was so much owed by so many to so few.
[narrator] The few were the RAF pilots
desperately fighting off the planned German invasion.
Most important were those with five or more kills to their name...
the Aces.
[Hastings] The Aces were very important men
because they shot down a wholly disproportionate number of aircraft.
People who were very good shots,
who are willing to get fantastically close,
many of them Poles and Czechs, did brilliantly.
What is striking is the novice pilots.
Many of them went through the battle without hitting anything.
You needed to have those fantastic reflexes,
you needed to be willing to get phenomenally close.
You had to be a killer. You had to have that killer instinct.
It was all about getting your man in the back.
Playing a very dirty game.
[Bronk] A lot of RAF fighters were shot down.
They never saw the aircraft shooting at them.
They were shut down by these 109s that were on free hunt
ahead of the bomber stream, trying to catch the RAF fighters
as they came up towards the incoming bombers.
Eighty percent plus of pilots who were shot down
never saw the enemy who were shooting at them.
[Wellum] The answer was never to stay still,
have a quick squirt, and then get out.
There was always the other bloke that was gonna get killed, not you.
[narrator] Despite the heroics of the RAF,
Hitler's Operation Sea Lion, the invasion of Britain
is still planned for mid-September.
With no real intelligence, Göring doesn't realize
how successful his recent raids have been,
and he unnecessarily changes tactics.
[Levine] The one thing they don't seem to be well aware of,
is that they were actually doing very well
when they were bombing the airfields. They were making real inroads.
They were coming quite close to 11 Group
as the group defending southeast England, having to move out of southeast England.
But they didn't realize they'd done that.
[narrator] Göring tells his exhausted pilots
to begin night bombing raids using the Knickebein system
when RAF fighter wouldn't be around to intercept them.
The plan now is to bomb Britain round the clock
until Churchill submits.
[Bungay] Hitler had forbidden any direct attacks on London.
This, he said, was a political act
and he wanted a decision to attack London to be his alone.
However, one night in August, some Luftwaffe bombers
who were trying to bomb the old refinery at Thames Haven,
missed the target and actually the bombs dropped on the East End.
[narrator] Homes are devastated and nine civilians die.
Whether accidental or intentional,
the raid gives Churchill the opportunity to take the battle to the enemy.
For Churchill, this is a fantastic opportunity.
This gives him the excuse to do what he's been wanting to do,
urging the war cabinet to approve for a long time,
which is to attack Berlin.
[Bungay] And that was a bit of a problem
because Berlin was at the very limit of the range
of any bomber that the RAF had at the time.
[narrator] The first night raid by British bombers on Berlin
is unsuccessful.
But days later, eight German civilians are killed.
[shells whistling]
[narrator] Yet this relatively small number
has an enormous impact on Germany.
This is a great shock for German psychology.
Suddenly, the war is coming to them in Germany, even in Berlin.
And it's a humiliation for Göring. And Hitler, of course, is furious.
[Holland] The narrative of the Battle of Britain
is all about Fighter Command but actually, Bomber Command
is in operation pretty much every single day.
They're targeting the new German airfields in Northern France.
The Germans are being bombed by the British every day
up in the Pas-de-Calais.
[narrator] But it's the bombing of Berlin that really unsettles the Nazis.
[Bungay] Hitler was at his Eagle's Nest in the mountains at the time.
He was informed and he said, "Right, they're hitting Berlin.
We will hit them back."
Hitler's concept was, rather than destroy the RAF,
we will destroy the British will to carry on.
Therefore, we'll start bombing their cities.
If we change our tactics to night operations
using Knickebein when the RAF are helpless,
they won't be able to find our bombers at night.
[narrator] Hitler believes the devastation his bombers can drop on London
will turn the population against the stubborn Churchill.
On September 4th, he delivers a terrifying message
at the Sportpalast in Berlin.
"If the British attack our cities, we will wipe out theirs."
When Göring arrives on the French coast for the very first time,
it signals an ominous shift in tactics.
On the morning of September 7th, the Luftwaffe assembled
more than 700 aircraft and they set off in a great wedge.
September 7th was an incredible day for Londoners.
Terrifying, of course but, you know,
the sight of this massive air fleet coming up the Thames,
unlike what they'd grown used to in the previous month.
This huge raid wasn't splitting up and going after the various airfields.
It just kept going into London.
[bells ringing]
[narrator] By 4:30 p.m.,
all 21 squadrons protecting London, take to the skies.
They've never seen an attack on this scale before.
Dogfights ensure over the Thames Estuary...
with over 1,000 aircraft involved.
[alarm ringing]
[narrator] Luftwaffe bombers then return at night,
just as they will do for all but one of the next 57 nights.
[explosions]
[narrator] The Blitz has begun.
London goes up in flames.
[reporter] Londoners everywhere witness scenes like these
throughout the night.
The people there bear the brunt of Nazi ferocity.
[Bronk] The London Docks is the most important
economic trading center in the world.
And there were enormous stockpiles
of all sorts of goods from around the world.
Things in particular like timber, molasses, all very flammable.
So, for example the timber fire at Surrey Docks
is one of the most intense fires ever recorded.
Stripped the paint from fire fighting boats on the other side of the Thames,
melted paving stones.
[narrator] The following day,
Churchill visits the East End to see the damage for himself.
[Hastings] Churchill memorably observed London.
It was like some giant prehistoric beast that while it could take terrible pain,
it would take an awful lot of killing.
The poor in the East End of London suffered terribly.
They took the worse punishment in the Blitz.
When they found all these bombs raining around their area,
what's remarkable is they didn't revolt.
It was a ghastly time, and what those people suffered,
especially those at the bottom end of the society...
was terrible.
It takes more than this to get me out of my home.
Now go on, you got to get to work.
[narrator] Evacuations of children to the countryside increase.
Britain braces itself for a Nazi invasion.
[Levine] The bombing of London is very shocking for the people of London.
But it's really good news for Fighter Command
because they're given a break, they're given respite.
And after a period of bombing London, 11 Group aren't in difficulty anymore.
[narrator] And if Hitler had hoped the British would turn on their leaders,
he is disappointed.
Public opinion swings firmly behind their steadfast Prime Minister.
By mid-September, the Luftwaffe is no closer
to gaining the aerial dominance they need for the successful invasion.
If it doesn't happen soon,
the occupation will have to be postponed until the spring.
The bombing campaign across Britain intensifies.
On September 12th, 18-year-old Spitfire pilot, Geoffrey Wellum,
is sent into combat for the first time.
[Wellum] I found myself with my leader, just the two of us,
faced with the prospect of 150 plus.
And it looked 150 plus, too.
And I thought to myself, you know, this is a serious war.
These chaps aren't doing all this for fun.
They mean business.
If you picked one out,
particularly if he was a little bit wide in his formation,
just pick one out and have a quick go at him and then get out of it.
I found this Heinkel on its own streaking back to France
as hard as it could go,
and I managed to get a good...
shot at him.
[rapid gunfire]
And he eventually crashed.
[narrator] With the weather deteriorating,
Göring has one last chance to prove himself.
Intelligence reports were coming through
that the British must be down to their last 200 fighters by now.
Surely, one more push is going to do it.
[Bronk] The Luftwaffe knows that the weather will very, very soon
be too unpredictable to launch a seaborne invasion
until the following year.
When September 15th dawned, and the weather was clear,
the Luftwaffe went for it.
[indistinct chatter]
[narrator] September 15th is the Luftwaffe's last roll of the dice.
...range of 4,000 miles...
[narrator] ...and becomes known as Battle of Britain Day.
[indistinct chatter]
[Bungay] The first plots started coming into Uxbridge in 11 Group,
at about 11 o'clock in the morning.
This first raid consisted of about 145 aircraft.
[alarm ringing]
[narrator] For the first time, Britain's fighters
outnumbered the Luftwaffe's,
as 275 fighters scramble.
12 Group, north of London, launched their Big Wing,
led by squadron leader, Douglas Bader.
Fifty-six aircraft in a mass sortie meet the incoming bombers head-on.
[narrator] By 12:00 p.m., six German bombers have been downed,
including one memorably, over Victoria Station in London.
This was just the prelude and the main raid came
just after lunch time in the afternoon.
Two-six-zero, zero-nine-five...
[Bungay] This time there were 475 aircraft.
[narrator] Three columns of Luftwaffe aircraft
attack from the most southerly route bound for London.
Big Wing is scrambled again.
As the Germans cross the coast,
wave upon wave of RAF squadrons are there to meet them.
The more aircraft the Luftwaffe sent over, the more they lost.
[Wellum] We felt that we were on top of them.
We knew we were hurting them by shooting down quite a lot.
The Germans lost an awful lot of airplanes.
And in fact, the Luftwaffe...
never ever fully recovered
from the mauling it had in the Battle of Britain Day.
[narrator] In the final count, fifty-six German aircraft are downed,
compared to 28 RAF losses.
A ratio of exactly two to one.
They're intercepted by such a huge volume of aircraft.
And all of the RAF fighters piling in.
It's just unavoidably clear to them, even to Göring,
that this has failed.
It brought their delusions to an end.
They had realized that the opposition was not weakening at all.
It was just as strong as it had ever been, if not stronger.
[Parker] It was the turning point for the Luftwaffe.
The Luftwaffe believed that the British were defeated
and then all of a sudden, it proved that they weren't.
[narrator] Hitler losses faith in Göring's Luftwaffe.
The landing craft and troops amassed on the French coast are redeployed.
Operation Sea Lion is off.
It's an overwhelming victory for the RAF.
It's a massive defeat, a catastrophic defeat for the Luftwaffe
and for Nazi Germany.
The reason Britain wins is because Britain is fighting the battle
for which it is prepared, and which it executes brilliantly,
but actually, the component parts are much greater
than the narrative would have us think.
It's not just about the few, it is also about Bomber Command,
Coastal Command... It's also about naval power as well.
[Bungay] There are three names that you need to remember.
The first is Winston Churchill.
He's the man who decided to fight the battle.
The second is Hugh Dowding.
He's the person who created the weapon that enabled the battle to be won.
And the third is Keith Park, commander of 11 Group.
He's the man who wielded the weapon.
[narrator] After the defeat of France and the evacuation of Dunkirk,
the Nazi surge through Europe had been checked.
Hitler turns his sights towards the Soviet Union.
Against all the odds, the RAF had been victorious.
While Britain was perhaps in a much stronger position
than we generally suppose,
the traditional narrative of the few, those few very young men
fighting, dying, risking their lives
to defend their country is really at the heart of the battle,
and we should never forget that.
[Hastings] If it hadn't been for that glorious legend,
that they had seen off the Luftwaffe, then it's hard to see
how Churchill could've sustained the will of the British people
through the very tough years that followed.
[Wellum] We realized in October that the Germans
had been denied their aim.
I was shot at three times.
And I got away with it.
I feel thankful indeed that I survived.
I feel very privileged to have been in a position
to have defended this country in a Spitfire in the Battle of Britain.
[theme music playing]