Lord Tedder GCB, Marshal of the Royal Air Force, 1947
The Sir Keith Park Memorial Campaign
Despite the efforts of the Sir Keith Park Memorial Campaign, a surprising number of people have never even heard of this heroic New Zealander. But he played as important a role as the great Admiral Lord Nelson, who dominates Trafalgar Square, in securing the freedom that we enjoy today. As Hitler's army gathered in the Channel ports in 1940 in preparation for his planned invasion of Britain, the Luftwaffe was fighting a battle for control of the skies over southern England. Hitler needed to achieve air supremacy for the invasion to go ahead and the only thing preventing him was the stubborn Royal Air Force.
Sir Keith was the unsung hero of the Battle of Britain. Commanding 11 Group Fighter Command, he was responsible for the defence of London and south-east England and his squadrons bore the brunt of the fighting. His role in the battle led the then Marshal of the RAF, Lord Tedder, to say after the war: "If ever any one man won the Battle of Britain, he did. I don't believe it is recognised how much this one man, with his leadership, his calm judgment and his skill, did to save not only this country, but the world."
The heroism of Battle of Britain commander Air Chief Marshal Sir Keith Park has gone unsung for too long. Support the Sir Keith Park Memorial Campaign today!
A greatly capable man and leader, to be sure; though he did have some advantages: German fighters only had an half an hour's fuel over UK air space which severely limited their flying time in battle with RAF Fighter Command. As well, the enormous surface fleet that the Royal Navy could field could have and would have easily blown out of the water the river barges that the Germans were going to use to transport troops across the Channel as the barges only had 2 feet of freeboard and would have sunk in a squall let alone a full-scale battle. The Germans knew this and they were never really serious about invading the Britain: they had already kicked the British army off continental Europe and Britain was effectively neutralised, at least for the time being, and that was enough until Operation Barbarossa really got going and the Germans invaded the Soviet Union. The Western Desert campaigns that followed the Battle of Britain did not slow down Barbarossa and were nothing more than a sideshow for the German army whose main forces were deployed against the Red Army in the Soviet Union after June 22nd, 1941.
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