"The Germans had the target of 'Deustchland über Alles and we'll push the Brits into the sea'. But it was an offensive, they were in France, they'd beaten France and the Low Countries, now they were going to attack the hated enemy across the channel but it was still an overseas operation. They'd got to push over and steamroller their operation across this country, which had never been done before.

We on the other hand could see it very clearly. We were scarcely schoolboys, but the cockpits of our fighter aeroplanes were all that stood between the invasion of this country by the Germans. We'd seen what they'd done to the nationals abroad. We all lived in this country. Some of us had our homes within sight of our airfields. I used to fly often over Portsmouth in the Battle of Britain and looked down on my home where my family were at Chichester. 

Tangmere was being bombed ten miles away. It's all a very personal thing. You got into your aeroplane, you felt the fears that everybody fears when they're going off to fight something. If you and all your chaps didn't do your damndest on every operation you took off on, then all these Germans were going to be flooding over your country, over your homes and destroying everything that you thought was worth preserving. That's what it was all about."

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