Proper 19, Battle of Briton
After Pentecost • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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He has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
In September 1939, after the outbreak of war, CS Lewis, the narrator of the Narnia books, wrote:
The next few years will be ghastly, but though my nerves are often staggered, my faith and reason are alright. I have no doubt that all this suffering can be turned to good if we use it rightly … but I can’t help wishing one could hibernate till it’s all over! As my brother said in his last letter, what makes it worse is the ghostly feeling that it has all happened before—that one fell asleep during the last war and had a delightful dream and has now woken up again.
From the start of the war, Germany employed strategic bombing in Norway, The Netherlands, Belgium, and France, destroying Allied cities and transportation networks. In the summer of 1940, over 2,700 Luftwaffe planes and bombers had reached Britain and faced a British RAF force of about 600 aircraft. This imbalance was overcome by developments in the British radar system, which provided the RAF an early-warning and enabled them to manage their aircraft more efficiently. As a result, the RAF was largely responsible for preventing an invasion of England and for slowing down the Luftwaffe for long enough over the months in which the Battle of Britain took place, that the German armies eventually became engaged on several fronts, particularly with the Soviet Union.
Some of you here may be old enough to have been alive at the time of the battle.