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alone. Hitler tried to persuade the British government to negotiate a peace treaty, but Churchill re sed absolutely, saying at Britain would ght to the dea .
The Battle of Britain
Like Napoleon, Hitler began planning an invasion of Britain, which he called Operation Sea Lion. He relied on his Lu a e (Air Force) so en up Britain r the invasion, much as Napoleon had relied on his eet. In August 1940 the Lu wa e beg bo ing British milita bases, inaugurating an air r with the Royal Air rce (RAF) known as the Ba le of Britain. Hermann Goering, head of the Lu wa e, predicted that Germa would need two to ur weeks to destroy the greatly outnumbered RA But he did not take into account Ultra and the heroism of e RAF pilots.
From the beginning of the Battle of Bri in, Ultra signals told the British high command how ma planes Goering was sending, where they e coming om and (usually) what were their targets. They also knew that Goering's st tegy was to get as ma F Spit re planes into the air as possible so that the German Messerschmi ghter planes could take them out of action. So the RAF commanders sent up only limited numbers of planes, the upsetting Goering's strategy.
From August 24 to September 6, the Germans sent over an aver e of a thousand airplanes a day. During this time the RAF lost 455 Spit s and a quarter of its pilots. But then Goering made a serious tactical mistake. F m a acking military targets with the goal of drawing the ghter planes into action so at they could be dest yed, he switched to the massive night bombing of London, in retaliation r an RAF bombing of Berlin. For 57 consecutive nigh the bombs ined down, as Londoners hid in bomb shelters and su nnels. Much of e ci went up in ames during the Blitz, as it was called. But London's su erings g e the RAF time to get more planes in shape and to train more pilots.
Then on September 15, the Lu wa e mounted a great daylight assault on the battered English capital. Two hundred bombers and 600 ghters er England. Squad n a r squadron of the RAF went into the air. All day the battle raged. During the height of the ba e, e Prime Minister himself came to Air Force headqua ers. Churchill loo d er the cha s and asked: "How many reserves have we?" Air Vice Marshal rk replied: "There are none." Every single RAF squadron was in e air; no rese es were le on the ground. But the invaders we driven back.