ROPE-A-DOPE. With Wings Like Eagles: A History of the Battle of Britain offers some new perspectives on the Royal Air Force's efforts. Because everybody knows the outcome, Book Review N^o.7 isn't in the position of offering spoilers. The military problem, as the Germans saw it, was that without air supremacy there could be no invasion of the Home Islands, as the Luftwaffe had to keep the Royal Navy away from the invasion fleet. (As if Rhine barges were going to get across the Channel in anything resembling an orderly fashion, but I digress.) The book suggests that, although the battle was a close-run thing from the British side, and the Germans might have been able to weaken the Royal Air Force enough to have attempted an invasion had they pressed attacks on forward bases and aircraft factories, the British managed their squadrons in such a way as to be able to meet any German sorties without revealing how much strength they had. The point might have been to bait the Germans into overcommitting.

It also suggests that the tone for the Battle of Britain was set over Dunkirk. Some commentators make mock of Hermann Goering's promise to finish the British by air, thus freeing the panzers to deal with the remnants of the French forces. Perhaps a Luftwaffe that had a free hand over Dunkirk might have done so. It wasn't a Romulan Cloaking Device that protected the Expeditionary Forces. Had the panzers gone in, the intellectual history of AirLand might have had a different beginning. Very readable and highly recommended.

(Cross-posted to 50 Book Challenge.)