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3. Nov
4. Royal Aeronautical Society Derby Branch: RAF at the Crossroads

Royal Aeronautical Society Derby Branch: RAF at the Crossroads

RAF at the Crossroads - Was 1942 the time for Britain to change its war strategy?

1730 - 1900 GMT

In the summer of 1940 Britain stood alone. Churchill believed the only option open to Britain was to bomb Germany into defeat.

By the beginning of 1942 much had changed. The Soviet Union and the United States were now in the war on Britain’s side and the bomber offensive was achieving little. Churchill was beginning to have doubts about relying so heavily on the bomber strategy.

The talk is in two parts. In the first part Greg Baughen describes British plans to invade France in 1942 and looks at who was in favour and who was against the idea.

In the second part he looks in detail at one of the reasons used at the time to explain why an invasion was not possible. Fighter cover for the operation was considered to be a major problem because, it was argued, British fighters lacked the necessary range. The talk questions whether this was really the problem the Air Ministry claimed it to be.

The talk is based on themes covered in Greg Baughen’s latest book, RAF at the Crossroads, which takes the story of British air power up to the summer of 1943. The talk also looks ahead to how the fighter-range controversy evolved after 1943, which is one of the themes in the next book in the series, “The RAF’s Road to D-Day”, due to be published in 2023.

On the date and time of the lecture, join via the link below:

https://teams.microsoft.com/dl/launcher/launcher.html?url=%2F_%23%2Fl%2Fmeetup-join%2F19%3Ameeting_ZjE3ODVmYTgtZWY5My00NjJlLWIxNjctOTNkNWRmYjE1NmY4%40thread.v2%2F0%3Fcontext%3D%257B%2522Tid%2522%253A%252274ab9ad0-2759-4b9f-bccd-62e7673b81fc%2522%252C%2522

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