ABSTRACT
Although the Second World War was really a continuation of the First, dramatic advance in aerial warfare made its effects on the region’s civilian population radically different. Within minutes of the declaration on 3 September 1939 the wail of air raid sirens symbolized a region, again the ‘cornerstone of England’, on front-line war alert. Yet not until the Germans occupied France and the Low Countries in May 1940 did they secure the necessary bases to force the Channel. This led to the famous Battle of Britain over Kent and the Thames estuary in August and September 1940, which saved Britain from Nazi occupation, owing to the resistance of Royal Air Force fighter pilots operating against the Luftwaffe from airfields at Tangmere, Kenley, Biggin Hill and Hornchurch. This proved to be one of the decisive battles of the war, when ‘never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few’ (Plate 7.1). Biggin Hill lost 400 of its pilots and destroyed 1,400 enemy aircraft within three months (Wallace 1957: 287; Blaxland 1981).
