"To understand the nature of the combat, it must be remembered that the aircraft engaged in it were flying at a speed of between 300 and 400 mph. At that speed place names become almost meaningless. The enemy, for example, might have been intercepted over Maidstone, but not destroyed until within a few miles of Calais, "Place attack was delivered—Ham~ mer smith to Dungeness" or "London to the French Coast? Such phrases in the Intelligence Patrol Reports forcibly illustrate the size of the area over which the battle was fought, That being so, it is better perhaps not to attempt to plot the place of attack too accurately—an almost hopeless task—but to refer to it simply as the Southeastern marches of England, The battle in fact took place roughly in a cube about 80 miles long, 38 miles broad and from 5 to 6 miles high, It was in this space between noon and half-past that between 150 and 200 individual combats took place, Many of these developed into stern chases which were broken off within a mile or two of the French Coast, Sixteen squadrons of No, 11 Group, followed by five from Nos, 10 end 12, were sent up to engage the enemy, All but one of the squadrons taking part in the battle were very soon face to face with him, Five of the enemy as had succeeded by sheer force of numbers in breaking through and reaching the outskirts of London, Fourteen squadrons of Hurricanes, almost immediately reinforced by three more squadrons of Spitfires, took up this task, all of them coming into action between noon and twenty past, There ensued a continuous and general engagement extending from London to the coast and beyond.
In it the. tactics so carefully thought out, so assiduously practiced, secured victory, Let a squadron leader describe the' results they achieved, (This is the opening action against the first morning wave of German planes.)
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.