Originally Posted by
friartuck
" so there is a school of thought that it wouldn't have mattered that much if we lost it anyway. "
never heard that before
Quotations /references please........................
Derek Robinson, in his
Invasion 1940 suggests - I'm paraphrasing, rather than quoting directly - that the only relevant service in 1940 was the RN. Anthony Cumming, in his book on the Battle (forgive me, I am off to read a bedtime story to Archi Jr - who is taught about the Battle, by the by, since his school and Beaver Scout group get me in to teach it - and I can't did out the details; I think it's
The Royal Navy and the Battle of Britain), sets about Dowding's reputation with a metaphorical piece of 4 by 2 with nails driven into it in a bid to note that Admiral Forbes deserves credit (something which is correct, but which can be done without assailing Dowding's reputation at all, let alone with what I thought the appalling degree of relish Cumming took), and reaches the conclusion that the RN's existence was what stopped the invasion from happening.
In the 1950s, Duncan Grinell Milne, late of the RFC and RAF, made the point in
Silent Victory that the RN had an important role to play.
While there is a school of thought that the RAF wasn't that important - I think that Pr00ne was merely trying to point out that it existed, rather than claim Gold Club membership of it - it does tend towards an excessively simplistic revisionism which ignores some key bits of evidence that the leadership of the RN thought that Fighter Command was really rather important...