Battle of Britain:
The Battle of Britain was a battle fought mainly between England and Germany using airplanes. It was fought mostly in the south of England. The main battle started in July 1940 and ended on 31 October, although fighting went on for many more months.The Battle of Britain began with German air raids on radar stations and airfields in the south of England. The Germans tried to gain air superiority by destroying the RAF using their air force, the Luftwaffe, commanded by the German Field Marshal, Hermann Goering. Planes from both sides battled in the skies over land and sea.A German plane accidentally dropped bombs on London, and Britain responded by bombing Berlin. Adolf Hitler was furious and ordered Germany to bomb English cities, mainly London, instead of airfields. The bombing of London was known as "The Blitz". Germany sustained heavy losses with their Dornier and Heinkel bombers being shot down by RAF Spitfire and Hurricane fighter planes. In June 1941, the Germans switched their attention to the east, attacking the Soviet Union, which included Russia, and Goering called off the entire operation to invade Britain. During the Blitz 43,000 British civillans were killed, and one million were injured.During the height of the battle, when the hopes of people for victory were fading, Winston Churchill made another speech that has been remembered ever since:
"The gratitude of every home in our Island... goes out to the British airmen who... are turning the tide of the World War by their prowess and by their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."
Battle of Atlantic:
The Battle of the Atlantic was the longest continuous military campaign[2][3][4] of World War II, (though some say it was a series of naval military campaigns and offensives[5]) running from 1939 through to the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, and was at its height from mid-1940 through to the end of 1943. The Battle of the Atlantic pitted U-boats and other warships of the German Navy (Kriegsmarine) against Allied convoys. The convoys, coming mainly from North America and the South Atlantic and going to the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union, were protected for the most part by the British and Canadian navies and air forces. These forces were aided by ships and aircraft of the United States from 13 September 1941.[6] The Germans were joined by submarines of the Italian Royal Navy (Regia Marina) after Italy entered the war on June 10, 1940.
The name "Battle of the Atlantic", coined by Winston Churchill in 1941, covers a campaign that began on the first day of the European war and lasted for six years, involved thousands of ships and stretched over hundreds of miles of the vast ocean and seas in a succession of more than 100 convoy battles and perhaps 1,000 single-ship encounters. Tactical advantage switched back and forth over the six years as new weapons, tactics and counter-measures were developed by both sides. The British and their allies gradually gained the upper hand, driving the German surface raiders from the ocean by the end of 1942 and decisively defeating the U-boats in a series of convoy battles between March and May 1943. New German submarines arrived in 1945, but they were too late to affect the course of the war.