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Absolutely true.

I was just sticking a claw into the comment that Trafalgar and the Battle of Britain were fought against MASSIVE odds. They weren’t fought against massive odds. They were fought against close odds, and the British won.

Or, more truthfully, the odds at Trafalgar favored the British, as the French and Spanish outnumbered them by only a small margin, but the Spanish and French crews were very green versus the battle-hardened and meticulously-trained British. Had the British lost Trafalgar, it would have been quite surprising. What made Trafalgar so dramatic was the size of the victory. The British should have won in any case, but that their victory was so sweeping is a testimony to Lord Nelson’s command and the quality of the Royal Navy of the time.

The Battle of Britain was a much closer affair, however. The RAF pilots were good, but they were evenly matched by the Luftwaffe pilots. Neither side had an advantage in aircrew qualities. Both were elite forces in 1940. (By contrast, at Trafalgar the British Navy was an elite force, while the Spanish Navy was competent by uninspired, and the French fleet were quite green recruits with a revolutionary officer corps). Spitfires and Me-109s were comparable aircraft, with advantages and disadvantages; neither had a decisive edge over the other. And the Luftwaffe had the advantage in numbers.

Had the Luftwaffe High Command had good strategic presence of mind and patience, the Luftwaffe should have been able to defeat the RAF in a long, grinding war of attrition in the sky. Neither side had the qualitative edge to be able to knock the other out, but the Germans had more planes and more production capacity than the British, and that should have told the tale. The advantage was with the Germans, and though it was certainly not a decisive advantage (obviously), it was a significant one. German numbers were superior to the British, and the Luftwaffe pilots of 1940 were an elite corps, with more battle experience (at the beginning of the fight) than the RAF.

The British had the advantage of home-field advantage (to wit: a shot down RAF pilot who parachuted to safety was back in the cockpit the next day. An uninjured Luftwaffe pilot sat out the war in a PoW camp), and had the advantage of radar, but a good strategy on the part of the Germans should have been able to overcome both. Basically, the German Air Marshall needed to keep sending his fighters and bombers straight at the RAF, smashing the airfields themselves, forcing the British into the skies to fight (or lose their planes on the ground), and using superior German numbers to whittle the RAF down to nothing through attrition. THEN the bombers could take out British factories unscathed and, when the time was right, Seelowe (Operation Sea Lion) could be launched and the Germans cross the Channel under the cover an air supremacy which would send the stately Royal Navy to the bottom as surely as the Japanese sank the US surface fleet at Pearl Harbor. Time, production and numbers were on the Germans’ side.

But patience was neither Goering’s nor Hitler’s forte. The RAF was in the toils, but not quite at bay when the Luftwaffe commanders redirected the German air force to start hitting British cities. This made a big psychological impact, and certainly did a lot of property damage, but it gave the RAF the respite it needed to regroup and survive. After that, it was the RAF hunting German fighter-bombers in the sky, a very different thing than the RAF itself being pushed back onto the ropes. While the Luftwaffe destroyed houses on the ground, the RAF destroyed German planes in the air, and pilots. And thus the war of attrition turned against Germany in the air, and the British were able to eke out a victory in a campaign that they really should have lost. British tenacity and bravery were indisputable, and what made the British victory in the Battle of Britain so glorious was that the Luftwaffe was an overmatch for the RAF and everybody knew it. Trafalgar was a great victory, but it was not a surprise. By contrast, the Germans should have won the Battle of Britain.