Smudge (your #12)
...I do know a bloke who flew Spitfires, our own Danny42c, who may offer a better appreciation of the article...
Danny has only just noticed this Thread (which appeared 1616 last afternoon). IMHO, the article in Hush-Kit appears to be a synthesis of all the revisionist histories of the Battle of Britain which have appeared during the past 70 years.
Isn't hindsight a wonderful thing ? Let's put ourselves into a time-machine and go back to 1939. We thought that we were going to pick up where we left off in 1918. Hitler and Guderian thought otherwise - and then it all went pear-shaped !
There is no use trying to disguise Dunkirk as anything but the humiliating rout that it was. Our Expeditionary Force (for that was what it was) crawled back minus all its artillery, its armour and its transport - a few of the troops managed to hang on to their rifles, that was all. And we had to prepare for invasion. The Navy was stretched to the limit, trying to protect our western approaches (as they must, otherwise we starve). Later disasters (eg Malaya) show what happens to Naval units which put themselves, without enough air cover, in reach of an enemy land-based air power (in this case, in the Channel).
Surrender was in the air (it was a distinct possibility). Then Churchill revitalised the nation in the May of 1940. We had to fight with what we'd got. And what we'd got was what the pre-war Governments had planned in the (very) late thirties. They could see into the future as far as today's planners can (which is not at all). It all came down to the RAF that summer. We were fighting "in the last ditch". And we won, that's all.
What the Hell does it matter if the Spitfire was better than the Hurricane, or the other way round ? Or if some of the kit we'd got was marvellous, and some was useless ? Our part of the War was won with what we'd got (and we could echo the words of the Iron Duke at Waterloo: "It was a damned close-run thing !") There's no more to be said.
Of course, at the very end of Hush-Kit's diatribe comes the familiar:"It was the Red Army that did it". Nothing and nobody won the war alone. Germany was brought down by the combined weight of all the force ranged against it: there was no "silver bullet".
That I should live so long and have to listen to this !
Grrrr!
Danny.