The Luftwaffe

Luftwaffe aircrew around a briefing model (MH5321)

For the British, the Battle started in July and ended in October when the German daylight attacks ceased. For the Germans, the Battle opened in August and continued throughout the winter of 1940-41 (the period the British know as the Blitz) and only ended when Germany launched its huge attack on Soviet Russia in June 1941.

Unlike the British, the Germans were fighting over enemy territory - if they crashed, or bailed out, the war was over for them.

In the exhibition you can see a Messerschmitt Bf 109, the Luftwaffe's greatest fighter at the time, looking exactly as it did when it crashed in a field in Sussex in 1940. What did it feel like to be that Bf 109's pilot, or the little boy who watched the aircraft come down?