At the start of the Second World War, the German army made rapid advances across Western Europe and rapidly reached the English Channel. But it was not going to be so easy to continue their advance into Britain because of the British air force and the English Channel.

The German leaders decided that it would be impossible to cross the English Channel in their landing craft full of troops if they could be attacked from the air by British planes. They concluded that the only thing they could do was to destroy the British air force and so they attacked the British airfields.

Of course, the British knew this, and so they sent up fighter planes to attack the German planes as they approached the coast. The battles that happened in the air for many weeks became known as the Battle of Britain.

Later on, Prime Minister Winston Churchill made the famous remark about the British fighter pilots: "Never have so many owed so much to so few."