The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Putting Canadian in the Battle of Britain - Encore

Episode Date: January 3, 2025

An encore of Ted Barris on his book, Battle of Britain - Canadian Airmen in Their Finest Hour.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. Time now for the last of our encore episodes of The Bridge for these holiday times. And for this one, we brought in Ted Barris in September to talk about his new book about the Battle of Britain and the Canadian connection. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. It's our Tuesday episode of The Bridge. You know, I was born in London, 1948.

But I only lived in London and the UK for a couple of years. Two, actually, I think I was, when we left, the family left, and we went to Southeast Asia for a while, first of all, for coming to Canada in the mid-50s. Now, why do I tell you that? Well, I tell you that because, obviously, I was born just after the Second World War. But I've always been and felt very attached to the country where I was born.

The country where I, you know, still have a passport from. I have a Canadian passport. But I also have a passport from. I have a Canadian passport, but I also have a British passport. But I've been back to London many times in the years since. Many, many times. I've lost count. A couple of dozen probably at least. Sometimes on holiday.

Sometimes for work, sometimes as a kind of semi-resident in the 80s as I filled in for a length of time. Each time I came over to fill in for whoever the foreign correspondent of the day was who was away on holidays or off on a course somewhere. And I want you to know that every single time I fly into London, every single time, I'll stare out the window if I'm in a window seat, which I usually try to get, and I try to imagine what those skies must have been like

in the summer of 1940. That was the Battle of Britain. Where there were not just a few, not just dozens, but at times hundreds of planes in the air. Luftwaffe planes, fighters and bombers. British planes, RAF, fighters trying to intercept the bombers coming in over London and points in southern England. So I try to imagine that as I fly in now, what that must have been like, sometimes right above London. It's an eerie feeling. Well, forget about imagining.

You can read all about it now in the new book by Ted Barris. Ted's been on the program a number of times before. He's a prolific writer of popular history. And his new book, Ted's new book, is called Battle of Britain. Canadian Airmen in Their Finest Hour, a play on Churchill's famous line about the finest hour. But mainly it is not a play on that. It's the fact that Canadian Airmen played such an important role. The numbers in terms of the Canadian airmen involved in the Battle of Britain is quite, well, it's almost staggering.

And it's one of those, once again, kind of little known facts that we have about our own country. And I talked to Ted about that in this interview. So enough with me. Let's get on to the discussion I had with Ted Barris about his new book, Battle of Britain. It's just out in the last week. And you can find it at any good bookstore. So let's go.

Here's my conversation with Ted Barris. So, Ted, whenever I read one of your books, I end up stopping at some point saying, why didn't I know that? You know, I kind of pride myself in having some basic knowledges of Canada's involvement, you know involvement in any number of conflicts, but especially in the Second World War. But I find every time I read your stuff, you always tell me things I didn't know,

quite a few things I didn't know, and this book is no exception. What does that say about, not about me, but about Canadians in general, about their own understanding of their own military history? I think it says that we don't look very deeply into the stories, or that we think we know it from grade 8 history and are prepared to leave it at that. I know that when I was doing my first military books 30 years ago,

I didn't realize Canadians were warriors. I always thought they were peacekeepers and peacemakers. And so I left it at that until I got to, well, it might even be longer than that. By the time I got to university, profs I was attending classes with began to use the word Canadian warriors and I thought what's what's that about because I didn't look deeply enough the other thing too we think we've got a tremendous canon of history books on our

military history and there are great military historians. You know, all the academics, Terry Kopp and Jack Granatstein, and a cast of several dozen, I would say. But there aren't that many of us who are digging into what's been sort of euphemistically known as popular history, popular military history, or creative nonfiction. And that's left a field pretty wide open for people such as myself to dive in and find these stories.

And I didn't know much about the Battle of Britain. In fact, I really should credit the guy who got me into this story. This is book number 22. And several years ago, a friend of mine, Mike Perry, he's a salesman and he travels the country a lot, and one of his pet interests, he lives just down the road from me in Port Perry, Ontario, one of his pet interests was, going back 25, 30 years ago,

was finding RCAF veterans all across the country and looking them up and asking them if they wouldn't mind having a beer with him or a coffee or, you know, a back deck chat, not to get anything from them or to brag about the fact that he knew them, just because he wanted to get to know them and their stories. And Mike's been doing this for years. And several years ago, he and I were having a beer. And I said, Mike, we're coming up to the 100th anniversary of the RCAF in 2024. I said, if there's one story in the Royal Canadian Air Force history

that's not been done thoroughly, properly, what is it? He said, Battle of Britain. And I said, really? He said, yeah. He said, you'd be surprised the number of Canadians who participated in the battle. And then when I began to do the cursory research, there were about 3,000 men and women who participated in the Battle of Britain. Mostly men and mostly ground crew, interestingly enough. There were about 2,500 Brits, and then the rest, Poles, Czechs, French, New Zealanders, Australians, Canadians, about 105 pilots who had flown in the Battle of Britain,

and 200 ground crewmen. I didn't even know about them. And they all went over together in one group of them, just a month before the Battle of Britain begins. The Battle of Britain is, and thanks to Mike Perry, my friend, he steered me into the direction of finding how all these guys streamed into the story. And they don't all go over in one clump. I mean, when the Second World War begins, thousands of people flock to Halifax, jump on passenger ships and get over there to become the first Canadian division. But the Battle of Britain is quite different in terms of its draw on Commonwealth

flyers, and in particular Canadians. The group that went over in a clump went over in June of 1940. They had been assembled from a variety of what were known as cooperative or auxiliary squadrons all across Canada. And they were all dealing with pretty crappy equipment. But they had been in the Air Force, a really scaled down RCAF. I have a great quote from one of the ministers of the Robert Borden government, who after the first war tells everybody who's in aviation, get out of aviation. That's a war business.

There's no room for aviation and peacetime. And so only the really the well-skilled and the determined few in Canada stuck with it and held their ground and carried on their careers or joined and survived the cuts. Anyway, so all these auxiliary squadrons are suddenly shaped into RCAF number one fighter squadron. And they go over in June aboard RMS Duchess of Athol. And there were 300 of them. But long before those guys went as a clump, there were others sort of streaming into the picture. Why? Because they had fallen in love with aviation as young men. You and I had models in our rooms and, you know, maybe comic books and, you know, pulp magazines of battles that were airborne battles from the Second World War, whatever, First World War. But these guys actually went to

the one-hanger, one-gypsy-moth aerodromes across the country and paid the 15 or 20 bucks to get a flying lesson, and then eventually began to get enough skill that they got their pilot's license. And this happened in the sort of middle 30s, the 1930s, just as the RAF is beginning to scale back up in expectation that there's going to be trouble and that they better be ready for it. And then, of course, this is coincidental with the streaming of the first spitfires and hurricanes out of the plants in Britain into the RAF. And these young guys in Canada are starry-eyed because they want to fly the fastest, the most modern, the most lethal leading-edge aircraft in the world. And smartly, the Royal Air Force begins to place ads in Canada and elsewhere in the Commonwealth in magazines inviting young men

to what was called a direct entry scheme. It meant that if they had the skill to fly, if they had a capability as a private pilot, they would be welcome to try out for Air Force jobs in the RAF and commissions. Imagine you're sitting in the middle of Saskatchewan or New Brunswick or, you know, North as a bush pilot, and you could become an officer. So these guys jump on. Yeah, I mean, the thing I love about this, I mean, I hate to interrupt you, Ted, because. Go ahead.

But I do have to ask the odd question. Well, let me finish the thought. And that is that these guys all jump on cattle boats, they go overseas, and one by one by one one they start to stream into, to get into the cockpits of these Hurricanes and Spitfires, as well as other aircraft, and suddenly find themselves in 1939 called upon to live up to the commitment of the Short Service Commission. You get your commission, six years service, and what do you find yourself doing? Flying in the battle of britain in july of 1940 and when they they started they were basically under the you know they they were

looked at as british pilots they were canadian but they were british pilots they had to fight fight eventually to get the little canada tags on the on the side of their their arms um but anyway they were in that was the main thing for them. The beauty of this book, as is often the case with your books, is there are so many first-person stories, first-person accounts of what they went through, how they got to Europe, how they ended up fighting in the Battle of Britain,

some of the adventures of those days. But most of these guys are gone, Ted. They're long gone. So how did you get their stories? Some of them have written memoirs. Some of them published. Many of them not. Oddly, I was out in Vancouver about two years ago

visiting a friend of mine with the Canadian Historical Association, Canadian Aviation Historical Association, Jerry Vernon. And I told him that I was working on this Battle of Britain project. And he looked at me and he said, just a minute, did you just say Battle of, I said, yes. He said, you won't believe this, but I've got two bankers boxes in my basement of all of the records of a Battle of Britain pilot named Paul Pitcher. I said, I've never even heard of him. He took me downstairs, gave me the boxes. And you know how when you get on a plane, you're only allowed certain luggage to carry on?

I put all of my crappy luggage into the passenger or the baggage compartment, and I took the two boxes on the plane coming home. I wasn't going to let them out of my hands. So there's lots of material that's out there to be discovered. Then when you get some sense of maybe memoir material that they've written or their families have written, there's correspondence. That generation of Canadian wrote letters. So there's correspondence home That generation of Canadian wrote letters.

So there's correspondence home to mom or dad or brother, or in some cases, kids. And then you get the combat reports, the daily reports in which the pilot actually describes the action. 18,000 feet, did a stern attack, three-second burst, knocked out the tail gunner, hit the starboard engine, burns, heels over, crashes. All that stuff is there in the combat reports delivered by the pilots themselves for the intelligence people to go over and essentially make official records. And there are the odd ones who are still around. for the intelligence people to go over and essentially make official records. And there are the odd ones who are still around.

My friend in Ottawa, Norm Christie, talked to a guy named Butch Barton not too long ago for his series King and Country, which you're probably familiar with. A lot of Canadians on historical television watch it. He found Barton somewhere in the backwoods of BC and sat him down a few years ago and he allowed me, Norm did, to quote some of the great descriptions that Butcher Barton

describes of being shot down and then getting back up again and essentially taking on... He describes this wonderful moment to Norm that when Norm asked him, how the heck did you get acquainted with a Spitfire or a Hurricane? He said, well, I went to the factory and they gave me one and I flew it back to the base. You know, it was that simple for some of these guys.

But I really have fallen in love with those bits and pieces of memoir and correspondence that have really given me the shape of the stories you're talking about. So that these guys are not just flat, one dimensional. Here's a combat report. pieces of memoir and correspondence that have really given me the shape of the stories you're talking about. So that these guys are not just flat, one-dimensional, here's a combat report, there's a odd letter. You really get a strong sense of their personalities and what motivated them and how they were afraid in spite of all of their skill. I can't see how they were not afraid. I've given the odds during that battle on both sides. I mean, there were tremendous losses on both sides, on the German side and the Luftwaffe side, as well as the RAF side. Paint the picture for us a little bit

in terms of what was happening here. We're talking about the summer of 1940, France has fallen, Churchill's taken over in Britain. The Germans decide they're going to go for the Battle of Britain. And they're pretty cocky. Outgoing Goering, the head of the Luftwaffe, says they're going to do it in two to four weeks. They'll have taken over, and the German army will be able to march into Britain.

We're talking about a period of a couple of months, really. 113 days. 113 days. What were the odds going in? Were they like the Germans tried to portray them as to their own people? This was unlikely that the British could withstand an attack from Germany. What were the odds? Not good.

I think at the beginning of the Battle of Britain, the Germans had in excess of 3,000 aircraft at their disposal. Scraping together everything, the British might have had 2000. And, of course, you're dealing with aircraft that wouldn't necessarily be in the best of condition because they've come through the Battle of France and Dunkirk. They left scores of aircraft behind when they bailed out of France. Hurricanes and Spitfires left there, and tools and equipment. Number 242 RAF Squadron, which was an all-Canadian squadron, bedraggled, but somehow victorious in France. They had scored, I think they shot down 12 to 15

enemy aircraft in a matter of days. But they just got out of France with the shirts on their back and whatever aircraft they could fly out the rest of it, they left behind. So Britain is left at the RAF is left in a, in a state of pretty low resources in terms of aircraft. But what they had in their back pocket was a guy named Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook, Churchill, Canadian, New Brunswick, or actually, pocket was a guy named Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook. Canadian.

Churchill, Canadian. New Brunswicker, actually. He is the newspaper magnate from Eastern Canada, whose story we know became prominent in Canadian politics for a while, moved to Britain in 1910, ran for office, succeeded with the, what the heck was the party called? I think it was called the United Party or something like that in Britain. And anyway, he gets pulled into Churchill's cabinet as the Minister of Aircraft Production. Why? Because this guy is a master at making industry produce. He knows how to cut through red tape. He knows how to make factories that are not particularly productive, productive.

In fact, at some point when all of the factories in southern England are being bombed, because they're right in the way of most of the Luftwaffe Armada attacks in southern England, Beaverbrook finds a way to find what he refers to as shadow factories secretly producing spitfires and hurricanes way away in the midlands way away from the front lines as it were in southern england and essentially he hoodwinks one of the the owners of uh i think it was called um bromwich was a plant in birmingham which had been given a contract for Spitfires, but hadn't produced one over the course of a year. So he says, he confronts Newfield, who's the CEO of the company. He said, we've given you all this money.

You've got the contracts. Why no production? He said, well, it's been difficult. And he says, well, what are you going to do about it? And he said, what do you want me to do? Give you the company? He said, thank you very much. I'll take it.

And so he takes it over and makes it produce, cutting through the red tape, delivering the right schematics and the people to promote the work. And bingo, he turns around the scale of production. I've got the numbers here somewhere for you, Peter. It's amazing. In the spring of 1940, the number of aircraft planned for production at Spitfire plants was somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 to 300. Before the Battle of Britain, just as Max Aitken is taking over, or Buehler is taking over, they can't even reach that 250 threshold. They're producing fewer than the target suggests. By May,

when he's brought in, total flip-flop. In May, 261 were planned for production. They built 325. In June, 292 were expected. They built 446. In August, instead of 282, 476. And on it went. And this is because Beaverbrook put the nose to the grindstone and used every way imaginable to make these industries produce. And they outstripped the Germans in production two to one in that period. But that flow is what was important to get them out of the factories and on their way to the air bases.

So we had the brains in the production area. We had the clearly the inspiration in listening to Churchill's speeches and the desire on Britain that they'll stand alone if they have to. But they also had these incredible guys who went up on these flying machines. And as you pointed out, a good number of them Canadian. Where did they find these guys? I mean, some of them were like barnstorming on the prairies, right?

While the Germans were highly militarized and training their fighter pilots and their bomber pilots, these guys come over and they'd been, I don't know, spraying fields, they'd been doing circus acts, they'd been doing all kinds of things, and then suddenly they were fighter pilots. But they had one other thing, and it's a thing that I've discovered, you and I've talked about this, Peter, over the course of my writing these military books, they had a sense of the task. Canadians understand what tasks are. You and I talked about this when you talked to me about my Vimy book. The Canadians weren't, you know, snappy dressers and saluting all the time to the officers,

but the lumberjacks and the farmers and even the students who get involved in the First World War at Vimy understand what accomplishing a task is about. And that's kind of what these guys were but give me i'll give you a quick example um ernie mcnab rostrum saskatchewan uh i think he was one of four or five kids runt of a kid so he has to fight literally for everything um his dad was a uh the owner and operator of a grain elevator in rostrum um he gets bossed around around one Sunday because he's wearing a kilt that his parents told him he had to wear. And he flouts the kid who gave him a tough time in the nose, flattens him in one blow, and then eventually goes to the University of Saskatchewan and leads the boxing team. So that's what kind of guy he is. Then he joins in lists in one of those auxiliary squadrons I was telling you about earlier that were sort of feeding the RCAF as it's beginning to build back strength.

But suddenly he gets a chance to fly what were called Siskin aircraft. And these were leading edge warplanes, single seater fighters. And in 1931, there is an organization known as the Trans-Canada Air Pageant. You and I would know because we're sitting in our pre-recording of this interview with the CNE's air show, whizzing aircraft over our heads as we speak. In the days of the 1930s, there was the Trans-Canada Air Pageant, and they would send these barnstormers and flyers all across the country. Well, suddenly, Ernie McNabb, now a commissioned officer in the RCAF, gets a syscon, and he's told that the Americans are about to arrive for a big show at the CNE in 1931 with their Hawker Curtises, and would the RCAF like to participate? In other words, to match the Americans flight for flight.

So McNabb says, sure, let's do it. And he gets together with two guys and they got to come up with something, a neat maneuver into spins, which means they're out of control, but in formation, and then together come out of that horribly death-defying spin together and make that an act, which they then do. And they take it from Charlottetown to Vancouver with the Trans-Canada Air Pageant, and they make it work. Now, what does that got to do with the Battle of Britain? Well, it means that a challenge was presented. He came up with a way of trying to meet it. And in that skill, in that ability to come out of various spins, which could kill a pilot if he couldn't control it, he understands more about aviation than the barnstormers and the passenger and mail carriers that you described earlier.

I read that story in the book and, you know, it took me back to my flying days. And, you know, you have to go through learning how to get out of a spin, which is basically opposite rudder. But you got to get into one first. You got to stall the plane to tip it over to get into a spin. And trying to imagine doing it, you know, in unison with two other guys, I just couldn't imagine. It was quite something. We've got to take a quick break. We're going to do that.

Then I want to come back and talk about one particular guy in particular who was not Canadian, but he had a huge influence on Canadian pilots in the Battle of Britain and had a huge influence on the stories of that war, quite frankly. But we'll do that right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge right here on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. Our guest today, Ted Barris, his new book on the Battle of Britain,

and the remarkable number of times that you can see how Canada was so involved in many ways over that, you know, critical period during the summer and early fall of 1940. Okay, the guy I'm going to talk about, you know, I've learned about as you have, Ted, since we were kids. Even though I still, I get fumbled up sometimes. Is it Bader or Batter? I've always said Bader, right? But I don't know. You'll tell me which one's correct.

But Squadron Leader Douglas Bader was a RAF pilot. He had been a pilot for some time. I think it was in 1931. He'd been in a terrible accident, lost both his legs. Imagine that, lost both his legs, kept flying, worked his way back into a position in the RAF and flew operationally during the Second World War until at such time that he was shot down and captured and spent the final years of the war in a German prison camp. But that's not the story that we're telling.

The story we're telling is the impact he had on Canadian pilots and what he taught them and how he kind of nursed them into such a key position in the fight for the Battle of Britain. So take it away, Ted Barris. Douglas Botter. Of course. Is an extraordinary character, and I've read most of the books about him, Reach for the Sky, I've seen the movie,

and tried to sift through sort of the BS of the story to get to some of the reality, and you do a lot of cross-referencing and so on. But the moment you're describing is phenomenal, because one of the things that the British wanted as the war broke out was a Canadian squadron. Well, RCAF wasn't going to send one for a while because they didn't, as I mentioned, until June of 1940. And Prime Minister King didn't want to send one. He was interested in the training plan

that would train aircrew for all the aircrew trades in Canada, which he developed very successfully. It was one of the most decisive aspects of the war. But he didn't want to have a whole lot of casualties from the conscription, like earlier in the First World War, they was worried about, because this was all volunteer, all the air crew were volunteer. In any case, the politics of the moment, in fact, the British created this squadron of all these Canadians that you and I have been talking about who'd sort of straggled into RAF commission positions. And they were all across about 50 different squadrons in Britain, just as the Battle of Britain is about to break out or the war is beginning. And so, quite unbeknownst to King, Prime Minister King, the British take an orphan squadron,

number 242, and they start throwing all these Canadians from all these various squadrons and various skills and capabilities into the squadron. And they first give it to a Canadian officer, a guy named Gobe, and he leads them into France and back. But when they come back from France, as was the case with so many of the squadrons, no equipment, barely any clothing, shoes, nothing. And they're really ticked off. They're stuck in some 242 squadron, all these Canadians. There's about maybe 30 of them. and then ground crew, another 100.

And essentially, they're waiting for the next move. And they're not very happy because they don't have equipment. They haven't been given much credit for the victories that they've scored. They've lost pilots in France. same moment, Botter is emerging from this story that you just described and earns the trust of the RAF, and they make him the squadron leader of 242. And there's this famous moment when Botter, who has to make his way to Coltishall, and because the home guard has removed all the signs from around where Coltishall, he can't find the air base until the day after he gets into the district. He finally arrives on the base. He walks into the dispersal hut, and there's

these bunch of Canadians, and they're all lounging around and not very happy. And Potter says, who's in charge here? And they kind of look around at each other as if to say, who cares? And finally, Stan Turner from Torontoonto who's a senior guy there says i guess i am and who are you turner turner what turner sir and he describes how bedraggled and disheveled these guys look and this says this is an unbecoming of the raf what's the matter with you guys and turner says, Horseshit. And Potter turns around, marches out of that dispersal hut with that horrible gait he's got

because he's got the two stumps and the artificial limbs, yells at a ground crewman to fire up a hurricane, and he proceeds to do a one-half-hour full demonstration at low level over RAF Coltishall of the most extraordinary aerobatics that any of these Canadians has ever seen. And in that moment, he wins their trust.

The legless fighter ace clearly knows what he's doing. But now the reverse has to happen. Now, Botter, who doesn't understand what these young guys have gone through, these Canadians, he's got to earn their trust. And he finally apologizes to them for raking them over the coals for the way they looked. Sends them to a tailor shop in Coltishall, tells them to go and spend the money you want to get clothing and so on. Gets the tools, tells Air Vice Marshal Lee Mallory that 242 Squadron is not operational until it gets new equipment and it gets completely resupplied, forces the issue all the way up to Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding, who then descends on the place, brings the gear, and suddenly 242 is operational. And Botter begins to bring all of

the skill and understanding and intellect of flying against the Luftwaffe that he's learned over years from talking to his peers and some of his own flying and passes that on, that wisdom and that skill to these Canadians. You know, fly out of the sun with the sun on your back. He keeps referring to the Huns from the sun. That's what the Germans did. Get altitude and get numbers. And controversially, he begins to build the idea of not just squadrons which are essentially 12 aircraft going up against the luftwaffe but multiple squadrons and what he refers to as big wings to attack the luftwaffe and this sparks a huge controversy right up to the top because not everybody believes in this

but bit by bit those fights that he's involved in, these Canadians score very well, and they are as proud of him as he is of them. It's a great story. There's so many great stories in this book. When you, tell me what it is, you know, I've seen this in, you know, in other books. I've seen it in my own research, that when you start asking the question,

who were these guys? Where did they come from? And I'm talking about the Canadians. Not surprisingly, there are many from the big cities, and they were lawyers and teachers and what have you, Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal. But there are a surprising number who are from, like the fellow you mentioned just a little while ago, from some town in Saskatchewan, some grain elevator in Manitoba town. There are a lot, and all these guys had jobs, right?

They weren't like looking for work. They were volunteers. Yep. And they were coming from like so many from small town Canada. What does that tell us? It tells us that we are a country of small towns. We are a country of small communities. One of the stories that I tripped

over, thanks to the work of a guy named Williston, a history researcher in Winnipeg, is the story of three men who came from St. John, New Brunswick. Now, again, I'm like you. I think, oh, God, the most renowned flyers must be from Toronto and Vancouver. These guys came from St. John and they went to a little airfield on the outskirts of St. John, New Brunswick called Milledgeville. They all learned from the same instructor, a guy named Hartwick, I think his name was, Fred Hartwick. And Hartwick teaches these young guys, a guy named Kirkpatrick Sclanders, another one named Duncan Hewitt, and a third one named Harry Hammy Hamilton, how to fly.

And these three guys, in their separate ways, make their way to Britain. They were, Sclanders was a barnstormer. He was part of an act, which was part of that Trans-Canada Air Pageant we talked about earlier, where they would fool the crowds into thinking that this young looking kid, he was only 15 or 16 at the time when he did this, he hops onto a plane in the middle of the air show and takes off, figuring that everyone figures that he's stealing the airplane. He goes up, he's always aerobatics,

clearly he's part of the act. Sclanders was like that. Hewitt is recognized right away for his extraordinary aerobatic skill. And Hamilton too ends up flying with one of the most famous aces of the Battle of Britain and the Allied Air War, Peter Townsend. In 85 squadrons.

They perform based on that skill that Hartlich gave them and the school of hard knocks as they, as they begin to learn, all three of them were involved in the battle of France. So that was part of the learning curve. And they, they emerged from that, come back. In fact, Hewitt was involved in his squadron's best day ever during the war. In May of 1940, they knocked down a dozen German planes, Me 110s, in one sortie. And Hewitt gets two of them. And the London Illustrated News finds him when he gets back to England, make a story out of him.

He becomes heroic. The Pathé film cinematographers come to talk to Hewitt, get his story. And who sees the story in the Pathé movie theaters around the world but his family back in St. John? And they realize what a star this young man, their son, is. Tragically, all three of the Milledgeville trio were killed in the Battle of Britain. Did not survive. But their stories, thanks to

this guy Williston in Winnipeg, was preserved. And I got access to it, permission to use the material, and then trace it back, get all the memoirs, get the diaries, the combat reports, and piece it together as this story of three guys from nowhere who fought hard and victoriously in the Battle

of Britain from Canada. And those fatality figures on both sides during the Battle of Britain were quite high. And the number, you pointed out, the number of times that, you know, some young Canadian fellow on his first mission never got back. You know, obviously experience gains you the kind of knowledge you need to have in the air in times like that. And for some, they never got to get that experience. Listen, we're kind of wrapping up.

One thing I should note, the Peter Townsend was the famous group captain, Peter Townsend, right? Who, you know, if you know nothing about the Battle of Britain, but you watch The Crown, you probably saw a couple of episodes of Peter Townsend because he's the guy who had the affair with Princess Margaret

and they wanted to get married and it never happened and it couldn't happen because the queen wouldn't let it, et cetera, et cetera. Anyway, that's Ted's next book. We'll work on that later. Here's my last question, Ted. You spend, obviously, a lot of time on this, a lot of reading, a lot of research, a lot of talking to people.

What do you take away from this at the end of it? What's the lesson of the Battle of Britain? The story that you tell about the Canadians and their involvement and which was such a critical win for the Allied side. The battle really has a personality because of the Canadians. The RAF was pretty monolithic and, you know, everybody worked by the book and looked the same. The Canadians didn't.

You've got, as you said, you've got Ernie McNabb from Roster in Saskatchewan with Hayseed in his hat. And you've got three guys from New Brunswick who probably were better fishermen than they were aviators initially. You've got a young woman from Vancouver who becomes Canada's first ever graduate of aeroengineering, aeronautical engineering, Elsie McGill. She didn't fly. She did fly. But her role in the Battle of Britain was supplying the Battle of Britain with hurricane aircraft fashioned, assembled in Canada.

Her story is amazing. She becomes known as the queen of the hurricanes. What it tells me is there's lots more for me to write about because they're all out there waiting to be, what was it when Michelangelo was looking at the block of marble and, and someone said, how do you know how to chip to create David? And he said, just, we just have to cut them loose, you know, bring them out of the stone to a certain extent. That's what we've got are these wonderful stories that if you dig a little more deeply than just the obvious, you find the personality of Canadians.

And I think that's really imprinted on this story. My subtitle is Canadian Airmen in Their Finest Hour. It might also be titled Canadian Airmen Who Gave the Story the Longevity That It Deserves because they were who they were. They lived and died uniquely. And they were, in the chronology of the Second World War, the winners of the first last stand of the war. Fascinating book, Ted. Thanks so much for writing it. It gives us all something to read and to think about in terms of sacrifices

that were made and the Canadian aspect to it, which we talked about in the very first question. Too many of us don't realize just how important a role Canada played in so many big events over our history, but certainly the Second World War was one

of them. Thanks for doing this, Ted. Peter, as always, my pleasure. Thanks for the opportunity. Ted Barris, the name of the book, Battle of Britain. Canadian Airmen in Their Finest Hour. Published by Sutherland House. It's now on sale, has been for the last couple of days. You can find it, I'm sure, at any good bookstore or you can find it online.

Well worth the read if you are, like me, fascinated by these kind of things and when you fly into London, if you get that opportunity, you'll look out that window if you already don't and try to imagine what it must have been like, you know, not that many years ago. Ted Barris on our Encore episode of The Bridge for this day, the last day of our two-week holiday break.

We'll be back on Monday with a whole new episode of The Bridge. Bye for now.