- I'm absolutely thrilled
today to be sitting with my great and good friend
even if we can't be together in the same room remotely, James Holland. James is a friend of mine,
so perhaps I'm prejudiced. But I also think he's
one of the finest authors of writing World War II
history in the world today. He does it from a distinctly
British perspective, but he also has a wide,
wide audience here in the United States who gobbles
up everything he writes. And that's not easy, James,
all those books behind you, you have written. - (laughs) - How are you today? - I wish, I'm really good, Rob, and it's lovely to see you. And what an amazing thing zoom is, because without it I think COVID would have been an awful or
worse (speaks softly) zoomed out at times, but yeah. - We'd be tearing our hair out and I don't have all that much left. So I absolutely agree that
this has been a godsend. This technology sometimes is
just there when you need it, which is perhaps a pretty
good backdrop for us to launch into just a
little bit of a discussion on the Battle of Britain. James, you're an authority on this topic, could you start by telling the audience why the Battle of Britain? What is the context in World
War II that generates you? So let me give you a subtext for that. We have one of the greatest land powers the world had ever seen
the German Wehrmacht and you have, of course, the world's preeminent
Naval power, Great Britain. - Yeah. - And definitely they
were fighting the battle in a domain that neither one of them was particularly comfortable,
and tell us about that. - Yeah, well, I think it
is really interesting. I mean, in the 1930s, Britain was kind of sorta behind on its rearming of his army, suddenly. Weirdly it was the kind
of leading arms producer in the world in the early 1930s. So it was kind of, sort of odd that we should be seen to be so far behind. 'Cause the big thing is
that the Luftwaffe starts, they start kind of building
a mass producing aircraft kind of much earlier. The Luftwaffe was announced and in 1935 and everyone's suddenly thinks, "Holy moly, we need to sort of catch up on this a little bit." Land power has never been
something that Britain been particularly interested in and it doesn't have a
tradition of large armies. What pretends to do is
it creates a large army when it needs to, but part of its policy and its policy for several centuries
before 1940 has been to have coalitions. And so that you kind of meant your army with other army so you
take the Napoleonic Wars, for example, it's Prussia,
it's Portugal, it's Britain. There's a whole load of
people that are fighting under British colors. And that goes all the way back to kind of sort of early part of the
18th century and so on. So, you know, there's a
long tradition of that and there no long tradition
of having a big army, so part of the Alliance with France is that France does the army bit, that's going to do the grumble and the British Expeditionary Force it goes over in September,
1949 to kind of, you know... The whole point is to kind of not go into attack Poland when
Germany goes into Poland, although they go into the war to protect or to defend Poland sovereignty. obviously they don't actually do that, what they do is they go right,
"Okay, we're at war now." And they're basically waiting
for Germany to attack them. And what they're doing
is they're building up they're pressing that
kind of massive go button on rearming and kind of
taking it up to kind of, you know, size 11 from beyond 10 for all those who know the- - (speaks softly) - They're pretty confident
that that's going to be okay because Germany has this problem that it's stuck in the middle
of Europe, it's resource poor, it's access to the world's
oceans isn't great at all, it doesn't have much of
a Merchant Marine at all. I mean, very, very tiny, hasn't frankly got much of a Navy, really. The Navy it has got, is kind of a fraction of the size of the Royal Navy, frankly is a fraction of
the size of the French Navy. So, what's Germany got to do? The idea is to kind of fight this war on French and British terms, which is where industrial might
access to global resources, global shipping,
industrialization, mechanization, that's gonna do the hard yards and the Germans just simply can't compete. But the Germans has
come up with this idea, which is actually not new at all, as you saw Brittney
brought out in your books, but veganskreig otherwise
known as blitzkrieg. - So the plans to have
France do your battling, do your land fighting for you, that goes pear-shaped very quickly. - That goes very quickly, badly wrong. I mean, what the British have done is they've got quite a lot
of (mumbles) and stuff, for they've been completely
upgraded in the 1930s. And you wanna do that kind of work while you're in a time of peace because which is exactly
what the US Navy is doing in the 1930s and '70s. Is because of course, refitting or building aircraft carriers or battleships and stuff that's the thing that takes the long time, you can't just sort of snap your fingers and produce lots of
them, it's a big process, you wanna do that while
you've got time on your side. So that's entirely sensible. What they also do its think, "Okay, well, we're gonna use technology, we're gonna use air power and Naval power to do a lot of our hard yards
so that we don't slaughter an entire generation." We've got a policy
called "Steel not flesh" as far as we possibly can. So the very tiny British
Expeditionary Force goes over to France and fights
in the battle for France, when the Germans launched their attack on the 10th of May, 1940. That is actually the world's
first fully mechanized army. I mean the German army is
remotely, fully mechanized. I mean, out of 135 divisions, it uses to attack the
low countries and France on the 10th of May,
only 16 are mechanized, the rest are kind of getting there by their own two feet and also- - Just like the last war
but just like World War I? - Right, (speaks softly)
particularly novel about how they do it. I mean, as you have so
completely brilliantly, written about in your books, you know, the Germans have this problem which is they're resource poor. So they have to win their wars quickly. So you have this Sphere Punch, the kind of the massive fist at the point of impact, you have the cattle shlacked, the way you surround
your enemy and annihilate and you do it PDQ. The moment that the Germans are drawn into a long drawn out attritional war, chances are they're gonna lose and Britain and France
know this completely. A strategic earthquake of course, is a run a mock in France
and the low countries. The very tiny BEF has
to retreat to Dunkirk and South of Dunkirk as well in the final battles in France and the French army is just
completely rabbit caught in headlights because
it can't move quickly. And I think when you're looking
at the battle for France, it's 50% German genius
and 50% French ineptitude. And the big thing that is
different really about the Germans in 1940 compared to Frederick the Great, compared to the Napoleonic Era, compared to kind of the 1860s or whatever, or even 1870 in the
French Franco-Prussian war and again, in 1914. Is that they've either got the Luftwaffe which is grown up organically designed to support ground troops
because as a continental path, they're land-centric, that's how they do things,
it's all about land power. It's not about Naval power, whereas Britain is an Island nation and with a global shipping trading nation and an overseas empire, it's all about Naval
power and always has been. And the second thing is comms
and it is really interesting that while America has the
most most vehicles per person in the world, there are three three people
for every motorized vehicle in the United States, which is way off the radar
compared to everybody else. That figure is eight in France, it's 14 in the United Kingdom, it's 47 in Germany and
something like 107 in, in Italy. So Germany is way down the
league in terms of mechanization but in terms of radios per household, there's no one to touch the Germans. And they've developed this thing called the Deutsche kind of thing, which is the German little radio. And I've actually got
one in my office there it's kind of nine inches by
four inches by four inches. It's super cheap, it's
made out of Bakelite and everyone can have one. And it's as revolutionary
as the arrival of the iPod when that first came in, it's a total game changer
because radio sets in the 1930, 1930s, they're kind of big and
they're made of walnuts and they've got kind
of lacquer on the front and they're really fancy and that's kind of, sort of
middle class aspirational kind of thing to have. What the Nazis recognized
is that what you can do is you can control the media, you can control film studios, you can control newspapers and you can control this new
fantastic thing called radio. And you can make sure
that everyone has one and everyone is listening
to the same old BS that's coming out of
their mouth all the time, which is not all kind of
Hitler ranting and raving and sharing everyone was spital and stuff, but the subliminal message
between lighter programs, Varga operas and speeches
and all the rest of it is, "You know what guys? We're great, we're gonna smash it, we're gonna kind of return German pride, we're gonna take over the world, the errands are going to dominate and Hitler's the daddy man." That is basically the overall message and everyone feels good about themselves, it feels they're impregnable. And frankly, the rest of the world thinks, "God, who are these guys with that kind of fancy military merchants and their flight paths of Messerschmitt and Junkers and Heinkles
and all the rest of it. And radios also, the army, they go, "Hang on a minute, we've got these really small
radios, how cool is that? Let's put them in a
groovy BMW with sidecar, let's put them in our armored cars, let's put them on our tanks, let's put them on our trucks and then we can all communicate. And hang on a minute, what
about a Panzer division?" Okay? So this isn't an ordinary division, this is a division that
has motorized infantry, motorized artillery, motorized
reconnaissance vehicles and of course tanks Panzers. And because of small radios, they can all communicate with one another. And that means that whole kind of problem of getting a breakthrough and then not being able to reinforce it, that's done because we
can all talk to each other and we can mutually support one another. - So let me take us then,
this mechanized army with this very modern communications, rolls through the French, boots the British off the
continent in a hasty and panicky, sometimes evacuation from the port still in British hands, Dunkirk
and couple others. But what do you do now? I don't want to say "James,
pretend you're Adolf Hitler." But get into the mind of
the German high command. You've just conquered yourself
into an impasse, haven't you? You've got (speaks softly), you still have an enemy that
managed improbably to get away. How do you attack Britain now? - Yeah, so they've got a massive problem on their hands because one of the problems is that Hitler has very poor geopolitical understanding, so he tends to kind of view
his enemies in the same way. You know, he transfers his
own worldview onto his enemies and of course, Britain is a
completely different case, it's not like Germany. So he assumes the BEF has been beaten and humiliated therefore,
and so is France, his allies. So therefore their case is hopeless. And so therefore they're bound
to come to the peace table because why wouldn't they? Well, they wouldn't because the Nazis are despotic and appalling and you don't deal with
those kinds of criminals. And he's already proved
time and time again that he's not to be trusted and can't be trusted as
far as you can throw him. - I think a liar (speaks softly). - Right, his politics
are completely despicable so that's why you wouldn't deal with him. The other reason you
wouldn't deal with him is because actually you still
hold quite a lot cards, you've got the word's largest Navy, you can rebuild, you know,
crossing the channel is not easy. Their air force isn't designed
to operate strategically and what we mean by that
is a strategic air force is an air force that
operates independently of ground troops. It is what we would call
a tactical air force, close air support is how it's designed. So actually, Britain's got
lots of things in it's favor. It's also got his empires,
it's got half a billion people, potentially that could be in uniform. It's got supplies from
all around the world. It's got America with its
huge potential, you know, potential that hasn't been
realized by December of 1940, but unquestionably there was huge kind of motorization that
it's already got in the US. And the US and President Roosevelt have made it absolutely clear what side they're on emotionally and politically and all the rest of it, so there's actually
lots in Britain's favor. This idea of kind of little
Britain, David against Goliath, the Nazi war machine
and all the rest of it, people always talk about
the Nazi war machine, they always talk about the few being, the kind of last offense
against the Nazi hordes. I mean, it's just absolute nonsense. - Tell our viewers, James, tell our viewers what
do you mean by the few, who called them the few? - Okay, so the few are the Spitfire and Hurricane pilots that, you know, Fighter
Command in June, 1940 is down to kind of 500 planes,
is up to by the 10th of July when the Battle of
Britain officially starts. It's gone up again to about
640, something like that, 640 planes by the end
of the Battle of Britain on the 31st of October,
it's way up at kind of 77Os, 780, something like that. So, it's called the few
because it's less than 1000 men and you feels like they are deciding the fate of Britain and stuff but my own view is that that
is massively over cooking it. And just to go back very briefly to the kind of defeat of France, the reason France is defeated and it's important to understand this, its because France doesn't have that kind of radio communication, so it can't move quickly. So what happens is the
Germans are able to, although the French in terms
of artillery pieces have twice the number that the Germans having and while their tanks are bigger and have better guns, better
armor than the Germans, they can't actually move
because the process of... Their very top heavy and
their command structure, so the process of getting orders to them is incredibly slow and laborious and really devolves on field telephones and the kind of, sort of
the main telephone system, which is sort of shot to pieces by Stuka dive bombers
and all the rest of it and by dispatch riders
who can't get through, because the roads are
now clogged refugees. So what the Germans are able to do is maintain that concentration of force against penny-packets of French Forces. On paper the French look impregnable or they certainly look more
than a match for the Germans. - Right. - The problem for the
French is that the Germans are able to take them on in isolation and because of that very
top heavy command structure, they're like rabbits in headlights and that's why they lose. But this is the strategic earthquake, it's a strategic earthquake
in the United States as well. Everyone's speaking,
"Holy moly, the Atlantic is not the great big barrier
that we thought it was." What Roosevelt's hoping,
what the Americans are hoping is not to get embroiled in the war but the hope that France and Britain will do the kind of hard yards for them. You know, keep the kind
of forces of freedom going and defeat the Nazis, send them packing and all the rest of it and when that doesn't happen, it's like, "Yikes, okay we need to maybe kind of, sort of start having a
rethink on this whole thing." And for Britain exactly the same, and so there was this
moment of extreme panic in Britain at the very end of May. And what I've argued
and argued consistently, is that the Battle of
Britain actually starts with evacuation of Dunkirk because that is when RAF
Fighter Command enters the fray. And RAF Fighters Command has been created and designed specifically
to defend Britain when it is imperiled. And the fact that Fighter Command is operating from British airfields, but flying across the channel
to kind of clear the skies and enable the evacuation
and the rest of it. As far as I'm concerned, that means the Battle
of Britain has started even though officially, as we know, it starts on the 10th of July which is why we're chatting
today on the 9th of July, on the eve of the official
start of the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Britain. But it's really important to
understand because actually the moment of greatest peril for Britain is actually Monday the 27th of May, 1940. And this is when it all
looks incredibly bleak, it looks like most of the BEF are not going to be evacuated from France, it looks like 40,000
men, if they're lucky. And there is the people that
are actually running the war in terms of government, Churchill has only taken
power as prime minister, 17 days before and although there was a wider cabinet of about 25 people, there is a war cabinet of just five. Two of those are from the Labor Party and they're new guys
Clement Attlee and Greenwood and they just don't have
the clout at that stage. So that means that the main
decision making process is in the hands of three men, Churchill, newly brought
in as Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, who
is the ex-Prime Minister and Lord Halifax, who
is the Foreign Minister. And Halifax is the most
respected man in Brittany, he's the next Viceroy of India, he's no devil-wise head on his shoulders and all the rest of it. And he is the one who
suggests over the weekend of the 25th, 27th of May, 1940, that perhaps we should
think about suing for peace because he's not a military man. He doesn't have actually that same massively broad
geopolitical understanding that thank goodness both
Churchill and Roosevelt have. And he says, "We're staring
down the barrel here, little appreciating that actually Britain isn't quite so staring down
the battle as it first appears, they're just completely
discombobulated by the fact that this strategic earthquake has happened and that France has been rolled over." And it feels like these Nazi hordes, the Nazi war machine is sort of, on the cliffs of cap grenade and about across to channel any moment. When an actual fact, all we need to do is just
take a massive deep breath, calm down a little bit and
just go hang on a minute. Let's just think about this rationally but no one is thinking
rationally except weirdly and ironically, Churchill who is known for not thinking rationally. He's on the wrong side (speaks softly) - (speaks softly) moment, James - Yeah, yeah. So this is the great kind
of paradox to that moment and Halifax keeps returning to it and Churchill keeps rebuffing, he's going, "We are still
in Alliance with France, you can't start negotiating
without permission from France." So he's like, "Yeah, but it wouldn't be... We can go through the
Italians, what harm is that?" And tragically, once the door is ajar, it'll be slammed wide over. You reach a Rubicon from which you cross and you can't return, you cannot deal with these
people, there cannot be peace. We must never surrender,
we must keep fighting. And Halifax, on the afternoon of Monday, the 27th of May loses his
temper and threatens to resign. Now had that happened, I think it's a very high chance
that the government would have fallen because of the
stature that Halifax has. What does happen late in
the afternoon of Monday, the 27th of May, is that Churchill and
Halifax go into the garden of number 10. They're not in the bunker
and the cabinet war rooms as part of the film "Darkest
Hour", incidentally. First time they have a cabinet meeting is the 18th of July, 1940 and they don't again until October. So that's complete nonsense,
but that's movies for it. But on that afternoon, they go
into the garden of number 10 and no one knows what was said, you know. Did he say, "I've got
incriminating pictures of you, Edward and (speaks softly)." Or did he say, "Edward,
Edward, you're a good man. Listen, we mustn't be
arguing, we must be united, you must respect me as prime minister, we can't do this big (speaks softly)." Whatever the reason, Halifax, there's no more mention of resigning. The following day, it's sunny, it's clear that the East mall which
is this wooden jetty, this lattice work jetty that stretches on to Dunkirk can be used and can take ships more up against it. And so suddenly the whole
situation in Dunkirk is looking a little bit
roaster than it was. - The museum (speaks softly). Last may the museum for the 75th in 2019, for the 75th anniversary of D-Day we also took a bunch
of visitors to Dunkirk to the(speaks softly)
film had just come out, it was a real- - Yeah. - We were there to
memorialize the 75th of D-day. It was a real Dunkirk
moment for many of us. I had never walked the ground before and it was (speaks softly) - It's fascinating because
it hasn't really changed much as you will know. I mean, that configuration
is all exactly the same and where the locks are
and all that kind of stuff into the Harbor. So all of that's very kind of emotive if you do ever get the chance to go there, which you currently have. And on the 28th, Churchill
then calls the wider cabinet. And two things have
happened earlier that day, first thing is that Chamberlain who is Halifax's great mate and who has been effectively
rolled over by Churchill, sides with Churchill in
the whole debate about, "Do we kind of talk to the Italians about opening peace feelers?" And says, you know, "We can't do this, we have our obligations to the French. You can't just do this." And I think I Winston's right that once you open the
door, it's slammed wide open and you reach a point of no return. Churchill then calls the
wider cabinet of 25 people and says, "This is the
situation and this is this, and of course we must never surrender. And everyone goes "Yeah." And that is at the crisis is over, there was no more talking defeat and Churchill stature grows. And of course, one of the
reasons why his stature grows is because of the evacuation of Dunkirk, every single fit and able man
is brought back from Dunkirk and that is 338,000 men. And it really is a miracle,
it is an amazing achievement, although he's quite right in that victory is not won by
evacuations and by retreats. The point is psychologically, even though Britain could
have still won the war having the whole of
the BEF put in the bag, it wouldn't have really in
the big scheme of things made a huge amount of
difference but psychologically, politically it would have
made a massive difference. - Yeah. - But for Germany, for
Hitler and for the Nazis, they're thinking Britain has
suffered this terrible defeat, it's lost its ally, it's at
this strategic earthquake. They've had their own
army had to retreat across the channel. Of course, anyone in their right mind is gonna sue for peace, and
of course the British don't. And so they spent a whole
month kind of waiting. What is really interesting is
that very, very early in June, just after the end of the evacuation, I think it's the 5th of June, Erhard Milch flies over
the Dunkirk beaches. Now, Erhard Milch is the
one seriously talented guy in the Luftwaffe general staff. He's hell a lot more
talented than Goring is as an air commander. And he looks down and he sees not a single
British soldier left and he sees lots of abandoned
trucks and guns all rested, but not a single soldier. And he says to Goring, "What we need to do now is
just launch our air attack against the British right away, we haven't got a moment to lose." And it's too late because
Hitler has already decided, I think back on the 24th
of May or 21st of May or something like that, to do Case Red, which is Operation Red, which is the next phase of the- - Overwriting the rest of
mainland (speaks softly) - Right, so that ship has already sailed, but also it's not possible
because all the airfields are back in Germany and you
gotta move those airfields up to France. In the case of, you know, your bombers can be dotted
around existing French airfields and Belgian airfields,
that's no problem at all, even Dutch airfields that's fine because they've got the range, but your fighters can't, they need to be as close to
the Southern coast of England as possibly can. So you've got to create
a whole lot of airfields that don't currently exist
at the beginning of June in the Pas-de-Calis which is in (speaks softly) and all the rest of it. And that takes time, you
can't just snap your fingers and create great airfields. I mean, you can to a certain extent because grass airfields are fine, but you've got to build
up all the infrastructure. You've got to build up their
paths and mobile workshops and fuel and ammunition
and the ground crew. And because the RAF Bomber
Command is flying over and hitting these targets
as you're preparing them, you've also got to put in
anti-aircraft defenses as well. You've got to put in blast
pans and camouflage nets and anti-aircraft guns,
and all this takes time. It's not something you can
just click your fingers and go, "All right, let's invade Britain." - Let me ask you a question then, so what was the part of the German difficulty getting untracked in the Battle of Britain
has to do with how rapidly they had beaten France,
unexpectedly rapidly. None of this was on the books, (speaks softly) they being
the German suddenly faced with a new operational situation. Hitler says, "Well,
let's launch an invasion, Operation Sea Lion, well known, but to do that, we're going
to have to get control of the air." And then Milch and others say, "Well, we gotta build some airfields and we got to put all the
things you just said." None of this was planned beforehand, it's the curious paths that a war can take that you haven't planned for. - Yeah, so Case Yellow is the plan that they have planned for. That is what the German
Military, the Wehrmacht is designed to do. It is geared up for such
an operation, you know, hitting them very hard, double punches and cohorts with the Luftwaffes close their support all the rest of it, your very few Panza divisions
doing the hard yards, being the kind of the tip of the spear, the infringer divisions
being the shaft of the spear and all the rest of it. All that goes swimmingly
according to plan, better than they could have
ever possibly envisaged. Well, they haven't planned for it, so the plan is to kind
of, by beating France, they will browbeat Britain into defeat and come into the peace terms. They've got no inclination to
invade Britain at all because that's a massive pain in the butt and they're not equipped to do it. So for the whole of June
they're finishing off France and therefore much of July, they're kind of thinking,
"Okay, what next? So let's wait for Britain
to come to the peace table." And the weeks passed and Hitler goes for his big triumph back in his Ceasarial triumph in Berlin. I think it's the 7th of July
and everyone's cheering, half a million people out
in the street swastikas, blah, blah, blah, him and his Mercedes kind of standing up there,
taking all the adoration, the miracle has happened. The wonder man who's has delivered them. Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia and the Osterreicher of Austria and Poland and got the back of the Danzig corridor and reunited East Prussia and got back the re-militarized the
Rhineland and showed them that the Germany is this fantastic nation has beaten mighty France,
they're kind of Victor in the Second World War. It's like the war is over and
Hitler thinks that as well, but it isn't because
Britain's still in the fight. And then he retreats to the Berghof which is his place down
in the Bavarian Alps. And that's a bit like
Churchill going up to kind of, I don't know, sort of North of Scotland and hanging out in a mountain Alp. I mean, it's spectacularly unhelpful. You need to be at the seat of power and- - (speaks softly). - And this is very weird thing
because as you well know, they have the, OKW the
Obercommando der Wehrmact which is the first combined
services general staff, which is a very sensible and good idea, but it doesn't operate as that. It operates as Hitler's
mouthpiece, it's his court. And so what happens is, he gets the Navy to come
along and all the way down to the Bergof in the Bavarian Alps, and they say, "Okay, so what's your plan?" He go, "Well, my inferior, we
think we should do an invasion on a very narrow front of, perhaps just a few miles near
Deal or Folkestone in Kent." And he goes, "Great crack on
and go and make your plans." Then the army turn up and go, "Well, what are your plans?" Again, "Well, my inferior,
we think we should, should attack on a broad front of 90 miles from Lyme Regis and in the
Southwest all the way to Deal." And he goes, "Okay, go on and crack on." And then he gets Goring, and Goring goes, "Well, my inferior we'll just smash them." And by that point already
Hitler should have said, "Well, didn't you say
you were going to smash the BEF when they retreated from Dunkirk and that didn't really work, did it? How are you going to do this?" And he goes, "Well, obviously we've got to kind of make some plans and stuff, but believe it to me it'll all bit fine." And the Luftwaffe's
intelligence on Britain is absolutely awful. They have no idea that the
RAF is divided into commands, they have no idea that
there is Fighter Command, Coastal Command, Training
Command, (speaks softly), not a clue. They have no idea that there is this world's first fully
coordinated air defense system that Britain has. So this is not just the radar chain, this is Observer Corps on the ground, this is identification friend or foe so that you can monitor
which plane is a Spitfire and a Hurricane, which
is a Heinkel you know, a Messerschmitt and all the rest of it, you can see which is which. They hadn't realized that
there is this uniformity of control from the ground so that you can see your enemy coming, take off from your airfield, make sure you're not on the ground when the Luftwaffe come calling, and you can be vectored
from a guy in a radio on the ground and directed
onto the enemy planes. Now that is something that the Luftwaffe has never had to deal with. In Spain (speaks softly) in Poland totally easy pickings, in Scandinavia easy pickings,
in France easy pickings, where the RAF were involved, because there wasn't an air
defense system in France. It wasn't air defense system,
there was a few mobile radars but they were kind of absolutely hopeless. So what that meant was that the Luftwaffe could attack where they
usual Sphere Punch, a massive of planes of
bombers and fighters where they really wanted to and they could pick off these
airfields one at a time. Because for the French
and the British in France, back in May and June, 1940, basically their only hope of taking on the Luftwaffe, was to kind of take off and hope they bumped into the Luftwaffe while they were beatling around the sky and hope that they didn't
get trapped on the ground. But you can't be in the air for very long because the fuel tanks of a Hurricane or a Morane or a Do Horten, or whatever it might be or
Curtiss (speaks softly). You know, it's not very long so you're on the ground
22 hours out of 24, which means that at some point, you're going to get hammered on the ground and that's exactly what happens. I mean, the number of allied aircraft that are shot down in the
air is comparatively slight. The number of allied
aircraft which are destroyed on the ground is huge. But suddenly for the first time the Luftwaffe don't have that, so there's a certain sort
of hubristick overconfidence about the Luftwaffe when they enter this, they just think it's
going to be easy peasy. Like it has been in Poland, like it has been in France
and the low countries in Scandinavia beforehand. So there is this terrible
miss appreciation and there is also the
fact that the Germans just don't have enough bombers. Bombing people in
submission is really new. - If US Army Air Force has
learned in World War II, it's not as easy as it sounds. (speaks softly) thousand plane
raids every night for years. - Right, so the plan is, "Okay so what we'll do is France in June, we're not going to redo
anything against RAF in Britain because we've got Francis to sort out." Then we got to kind of
"Okay, then we all need to go to Paris and kind of have a hooker and drinks and wine and
do a bit of a tournament. I've got to go back to Berlin
and we could think about it a little bit and think
about what next plan is. Start moving stuff up to the channel coast and the rest of it." So that takes a little bit of time, but as people are moving out,
as Luftwaffe is getting close, then what we'll do is
we'll start kind of hiring, British coastal shipping in the channel and hopefully we can draw
the RAF out a little bit and we'll see what happens. That's what's happening in July. But what we're gearing up
for is the main air assault, you know, the attack
of the (speaks softly) and then Adler Tag is the
launch day of the attack of the Eagles of the Adler. And so only at the point
where all the Luftwaffe that he recons he needs is
up on the channel coast, is the point where the
attack will be launched and for all sorts of reasons that isn't until the 13th of August, 1940. So quite a long time has passed. In that time, Britain
has completely rebuilt his strength in terms of his Spitfire, the losses that suffered over
France and over Dunkirk in May and early June, they've all been made good and they've refined their
system a little bit more, they've also drawn for breath. I'm really being lured too
much into the channel fighting. And they're in pretty good
order already, frankly. And what it means is by
middle of August, 1940 when the Battle of Britain,
air battle proper starts, they're in really good fetal because the home fleet is all congregated in the Southeast of England. There is not a single hope
that any allied invasion is going to take place
while they're there. You've also got the
Auxiliary Naval Service which is known as Harry Tate's Navy. And these are... Because we're a seafaring
nation in Britain, there's lots and lots of
fishermen and trawlers and all the rest of it, and what they do is they chuck it, they sort of bolt the cannon
into the kind of poop deck and they're laying mines and
they're sweeping for mines. And the whole channel
is just absolutely laced with massive minefields and they're on anti
invasion watch as well. And they're taking potshots
at aircraft if they come over. Meanwhile, Bomber Command is attacking all these airfields in Northern France and in targets in Germany as well and making a nuisance of themselves. So is Britain is fighting
by the middle of August when at the day it starts,
Britain is fighting the war, the air battle, the battle full stop that entered the wider battle full stop that it's been preparing to
fight, the defensive battle. - So let me ask you a
question about memory. You make a pretty good argument
that the British were not in as bad of shape as everyone thinks. So that the notion of facing
down the German war machine, as we always say, was hopeless, thank God Churchill rallied his countrymen at precisely the right moment, little Britain barely
able to defend itself but somehow miraculously winning the war. When I talk about D-Day, I sometimes point out the
German Defenses enormity were pretty dreadful when
you get right down to it. I sometimes get a little
pushback from people who are saying, "Are you
saying this wasn't heroic? Are you saying that bravery
and courage and fortitude and the bulldog nature of British defensive strategy
had nothing to do with it?" Was it really as easy as you're making it out to be James Holland? That's my question. - Well, no of course not. And... Okay, let me give you an
example of this, okay. So (speaks softly). - This will be our last question. - So the Battle of Britain day
in September the 15th, okay? And that was a Sunday back in 1940. And it's chosen because
it was a culmination of a series of major raids on London and very visible, I think,
because it was over London so it was over a very
heavily populated people. Everyone could see the
contrails, see planes coming out. It just seemed like absolutely
gargantuan air battle, the like of which no one ever seen before. And actual fact, there
were little kind of forays and little kind of ding-dongs going on throughout of the day. But the two main raids focused around just before lunchtime about mid day, half past 12 in the afternoon
around Southeast London. And then the second raid was
around three o'clock, 3:30 also in Southeast London. The first one, there were about a 100
German aircraft involved in the first big raid, big raid, okay? 100 aircraft, okay? Of which 25 were Dornier
17s and 75 were a mixture of Messerschmitt twin-engine fighters 110s and simulators fighters 109s. The second and against them, incidentally were range 285
Spitfires and Hurricanes. - Aha. - So almost outnumbered- - (speaks softly) James,
I will admit that. - Yeah, and so in the afternoon, there are a 100 bombers
flying over protected by 200 Luftwaffe fighters. Rained against them are 335
Spitfires and Hurricanes. And this whole scene is made famous because Churchill goes
to visit Keith Park, the Fighter Command is
divided into groups, little areas, geographical areas, and 11 group is the main front line because that's London
and Southeast England. And the main control room is Oxbridge which is in West London. And Churchill goes down there
and he stands in the dice, looking down on the map
table, the control room, the operations room of Oxbridge where they can see a kind of a visual map of the battle being played out. And Churchill says, "Where
are all the reserves?" And Keith Park goes "There are none." Now the way this has always been told is "There are none, we are so
up the creek, this is it." But that is us transporting a
tone of voice into something that we were not there to witness. He might've just gone, "There are none because
what I've decided to do is put them all in at
this particular point because this is the most
advantageous way to do it, but don't worry about it Winston, because actually there's
another 400 aircraft around the country, it's just that that's what I've got in
my particular arsenal down here in the Southeast." But we don't know whether he said that, but that is the truth. And of course, the point is, if you are in 92 Squadron, for example and you've take off from Biggin Hill and you are a 20 year old pilot, you are one of 12 taking on 300. But collectively you
are one of 335 Spitfires and Hurricanes, you might've
not yet see this but you are. That is a fact (speaks softly) you don't see it that
way because you're 20 and you're breaking yourself and the odds just seem insurmountable. One of the reasons... But obviously to do that requires frankly, I don't want to be crude,
but it requires nuts of steel I mean, that requires bravery
of the absolute highest order. And there is nothing
to diminish the heroism of those who were doing what they're doing or the seriousness of what they're doing, this is a big moment in the war it's a big moment in global history. What they're doing is changing
the future of the world and it is incredibly important. My point is that what
Britain should be doing and what the allies in the free world should be commemorating is the brilliance with which the battle was fought and the superior strategy,
the superior tactics, the superior operational level, the nuts and balls of
how you actually manage and organize your forces
and run your battle, which is vastly superior
to that of the Germans. But when you add in the Navy, when you add in the fact there's two and a half million men
in uniform in Britain by the middle of August or certainly by the beginning of September, 1940, the Germans just do
not have a hope in hell of ever getting across the channel. And that means that
their policy is doomed, which then means that they're consigned to fighting
a long nutritional war which they cannot afford,
and they're not going to win. Because the bottom line is they then go into the Soviet Union, as you all know in June, 1941, much earlier than they planned
to do before they're ready for such a gargantuan undertaking. And if you think about it, I've argued and I like to think argued
convincingly that the war is over for them by about November, 1941. Because if you think about it,
let's take an arbitrary date like the 15th of June, 1941, so the battle of Britain
is lost, the Blitz's done, they've continued to bomb Britain, but it's had an absolute
pretty much zero effect on Britain's chances of kind
of getting out of the war. Part of the Atlantic
isn't going brilliantly, certainly by the summer of 1941 they've lost that opportunity
'cause they just don't have enough U-boats
operating in the Atlantic, six U-boats operating in
total in January, 1941. It's not enough, Atlantic
is a big old place, There's a lot of shipping coming across. So that's not working. But think about 15th of June,
1941, Germany has one enemy. It's Great Britain (speaks
softly) plus empire, plus- - Six months later- - Later, USSR, USA, Great Britain, plus Dominion, plus Empire,
they're not going to win. It's just never going to happen. - You have clearly set
through one of my lectures at some earlier point in my academic- - I probably even cripped from Europe. But my point is this, that is why the Battle of
Britain is so important because it is essential
in the summer of 1940, the Germany defeats Britain. And Churchill makes this
great point, he says, "Hitler knows he must invade Britain and defeat Britain or lose the war." And you know what? He's bang on the money. - So James Holland as always, I stand in awe of your area
edition in you're learning, a lot of fun, a lot of great points. We have a pretty good number of questions, question and answer time here. And if you'll let me go with them, let me kind of shoot them at you. Let's try to get as many
of these in as possible. Let's see what we can do. So shoot from the hip on these ones. - Yep. - Mr. Holland, all right. We have James Gibson. He wants to know, did the British bombing of
Berlin truly shake Hitler's view on how to proceed with the
war or did it just give him the excuse to initiate
unrestricted bombing of British cities? So this talks about that moment when the Luftwaffe
suddenly changes attack, it goes from attacking the RAF to terror bombing raids on
London and other big urban areas. So tell us about that, is that real? Was it the RAF hitting Berlin? - Yeah, so there is a curious, sort of double standards
with Hitler on bombing. So up until that point,
you're allowed to... The Luftwaffe is instructed
to hit military targets but not civilian targets. And this is all part of the thing because he wants Britain to sue for peace. So he doesn't want... and there is this sneaking suspicion, that if you start
hitting civilian targets, actually it'll make Britain more reluctant to go to the peace table.
Which is kind of weird when you think, he had not seen as such qualms about kind of pulverizing Warsaw
or Warzawa or whatever. But there is always
kind of inconsistencies with Hitler's is strategic thinking. What happens on the night, I think it is of the 23rd, 24th of August is a Luftwaffe bomber, Heinkel goes wrong, it sort of loses its way and drops a few bombs in North London. - North London? - North London, yeah. (speaks softly) And it's accidental,
they don't mean to do it, but it happens. And the British War Cabinet
go, "We must avenge this." And actually it's very important for Churchill and the entire War Cabinet. They think, "We need to
show that we're not beaten and what could we have a
better way of doing this than bombing Berlin and frankly, it doesn't really matter
whether we kill lots of people and cause lots of destruction." The fact that British
bombers are over Berlin would be massive kind of
two fingers to the Germans. They they're thinking
that the war has been won. So they go the following night, they launch this attack and send over several hundred bombers and they attack Berlin and
it's not incredibly successful in terms of damage. But it's a real wake
up call for the Germans and they think "How in a minute?" The German public as well are kind of really thrown by this. And then there's another one,
and then there's another one, there's a fourth one so
by the 3rd of September, 4th of September, something like that, there's four separate
bombing rates on Berlin. And at this point, Hitler just goes, blows his top and goes, "Right, we're gonna have these guys, we're gonna fight back." And so they launched their
attack on the Saturday, the 7th of May, 1940. And then again, that night and then again the following day and the following night and they keep going
until the middle of May. Now it doesn't have a
huge amount of effect because bombing by night
is not very accurate at that stage of the war, they don't have enough bombers. I mean, interestingly, I'll
say something in a minute, but... the whole point of the
Luftwaffe's air assault on Britain is to destroy the RAF. And the main reason you're doing that is you do that on the
ground and in the air, that's the plan. Now, nothing has changed by that. I mean, you can understand from, sort of Germans being
humiliated point of view in showing the British who's boss. A counter attack on London
and a bit of bombing on London for a couple of days might
be kind of justified. - Yes. - But change your entire
strategy to keep bombing London and other cities until middle of May, 1941 is sort of a bit pointless, really because you can't destroy the RAF when y'all are attacking by night, who are predominantly
defending Britain by day. By a bombing campaign, you
need to hit the airfields, you need to destroy them in the air. And so it's almost a kind
of a rubber stamp saying our entire strategy for defeating the RAF has failed and a mission of
strategic and tactical failure. What is also interesting though is that on the other hand, I mean, he's quite right
that the battle plans, the strategy and tactics
of the Battle of Britain have completely failed because
there are 158 RAF airfields in Britain in 1940, and
the Luftwaffe never manages to knock out more than one
for more than 48 hours, and that's a pretty dismal
return on your effort. And of course, what the Blitz
does to keep hammering away of Britain until the middle of May '91 is just to massively
deplete their bomber force, so that when they do go into
the Soviet Union in June, 1941, the Luftwaffe is considerably smaller than it was on the 10th of May, 1940, when it launches all
out attack on the West. So these are sort of bad decisions. I mean, the truth is Hitler
does it because he wants to show the Britain that he's not
afraid of making such decisions and that he's prepared to give it hard, but also because he
doesn't know what to do. The plan isn't working, so
if that plan isn't working, let's try another one and
then let's try another one and let's try another
one until it does work. And of course, none of them work because they're not equipped
and set up to prosecute such a strategy. - I have a technical
question for you right now, but from Fredrick Jong,
would like to know, were RAF bomber pilots and
co-pilots cross-trained to function as fighter pilots? So if you were a member of
a before engine bomber crew, did you get some backdrop
as a fighter pilot? Did you get any training there? - No, not at all. So what would happen is when
you start your training, you would start on little
biplanes and stuff, Curtis and some things
and Stamins in the US, you progress onto Harvard's and stuff if you were going to be a fighter pilot, and you progressed on
to twin-engine aircraft if you were going into
transport or bomber pilots. And that would happen after you're at a pretty early stage actually. And then you would then go to
your operational training base and that's where you
would conveyed onto type just Spitfire, Hurricane, or
B17 or whatever it would be. So no that was worked up but it was possible once you
had been a fighter pilot to then become a bomber pilot and vice versa and that certainly did happen,
but it was pretty rare. I mean, a very famous example of that is Bird styles throughout the
exterminate for the Bigbird, one of the best memoirs of what it's like being a bomber pilot, he was on B17s flying in the spring of '19 and summer of 1944. Then after he finished and
completed his first tour, he then switched to fighters, trained up in UK on fighters,
was subsequently killed as a fighter pilot and a Mustang, I think in November,
1944, rather tragically. And there were people like Tony Iveson who was a Battle of Britain, I think he was a Hurricane pilot. And he later moved on to Lancaster and became a Lancaster Bomber Pilot. But these are pretty rare
to be perfectly honest. So, no you weren't cross-trained, you had to specifically retrain. - I have a good question
here from George Kolczynski, which if I'm guessing
my ethnicity is correct is that's a Polish last name. Might you comment on the
role of foreign allied pilots in the RAF? - Yeah. Well, I mean, one of the
problems that the RAF has is that it doesn't have
a shortage of aircraft. So the Germans have is
shortage of aircraft but they don't have a shortage
of pilots in summer of 1940. Britain has a slight shortage of pilots. One of the reasons why, the myth of sort of being outnumbered persists, and I am going to get to
a point, I promise you but bear with me. One of the reasons why the whole myth about the battle persists is because the British
intelligence on the Luftwaffe was pretty good in terms
of numbers of units and where they were
and all the rest of it. But they assumed that a Germans Scuffle was the same as a British Squadron, while it actually, it wasn't. A German Scuffle would never
have more than 12 aircraft and 12 pilots, whereas quite often they
would be under strength and they might have nine or 10 or eight or something like that. They're very, very rarely a full strength. And really a German Scuffle
would operate comfortably at more like nine, rather than 12. Whereas British pilots, a British Squadron
would have 12 in the air but would be supported by 22
to 24 pilots and aircraft. So you have almost double the
number of pilots and aircraft to maintain 12 in the air at any one time. So when frontline squadrons in late August and early September, 1940 are falling to kind of three quarters,
75% strength in terms pilots, what Keith Park and Air Chief Marshal Lord Downing the commander of Fighter Command, meaning is actually more like
16 to 18 pilots, not nine. And so actually their situation
wasn't anything like as bad as they thought it was. But when you're in defensive
battle overestimating the strength of your enemy
isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's actually quite useful thing to do. - Good point. - And they got around this problem by speeding up the
operational training units, which is where you come,
you've got your wings. If you worked out, you're
going to be a fighter pilot, and you go and learn how to
fly a Spitfire or a Hurricane. What they do is they massively
slashed the hours on that. And again, another myth
has grown out that people were going into the Battle of
Britain with kind of 10 hours and their logbooks also, all of which is absolute nonsense. You will be going to
the Battle of Britain, Frontline Squadron with 150, 175 hours and your logbooks of which only 10 or 15 might be on Spitfires. But you wouldn't be sent
into the air on that you would then be grounded until you were kind of thought
you were up to scratch, so you would build up those hours. So that's another myth. What Keith Park did
was introduce this idea of the ABC classification of squadron so an A squadron would be
a 100% experienced pilots, a B squadron would be 50% greenhorns and 50% experienced
pilots and that would be somewhere down in the
Southwest of England. So well, you might be involved in action but you wouldn't be as busy as you were if you were in Southeast England. And then a category C squadron would be up in Scotland
or Northeast England or somewhere where
occasionally alone Junkers 88 from Stavanger in Norway
my might come over. But basically you were left alone and that gave you the opportunity to really build up your hours, learn from kind of the
handful of experienced pilots that were in the squadron. And then when you were ready, then you could be transformed
through a click of a finger and one short flight, you could be pushed down into
Southeast England or whatever. And that unquestionably
saved a huge amount of lives. And that was the kind of pilot
crisis over just like that. And that was indicated
on the 7th of September, the very same day that the Blitz started. However, there was this
concern that we're running out of pilots and so they hurried through the number of foreign
nationals that were coming in and hurried them into
the battle very quickly. And that included the Polish pilots. I think there was a kind of 147 of them who actually flew in
the battle of Britain. So 120 Czech pilots, 97 Canadians and of course, famously 11 Americans, volunteers as well- - The numbers you just gave
that's 400 fighter pilots, that's quite a lot- - Yeah, which is a decent
number, is a decent number. And, what was very good
about all these pilots, even the American pilots is
they were already experienced, they were coming with
decent numbers of vast and their log books, so even though they then got to train on to type, because flying is second
nature by this stage. When you're being a fighter pilot, you're training as a fighter pilot, by the time you join a frontline squadron, you don't want to be thinking
about flying anymore. You want to be thinking
about being a fighter pilot, you want to be thinking
about saving your butt, and shooting down your enemy. You don't want to have to think, "How do I bang to the left? How do I climb to kind of 16 angel 16?" You don't really think about that stuff, you just want to do it. It's like when you've driven
a car for a long time, you don't think about indicating down kind of Rodeo Drive, you just indicate and off you go. So it's the same sort of thing. And so a lot of these Czechs
and Poles and Canadians and new Zealanders and
Americans and Irish, they were coming over and volunteering and continuing the fight. Doesn't take much to get them up to speed and what you find with the Polish because they've lost their country, they kind of feel they've
got nothing to lose which means they're more aggressive which means they're getting much closer. They're going right at the backside of these Luftwaffe planes. They've already got experience of that from their kind of not
particularly good planes than they had Poland (speaks softly). And they're just a bit more aggressive, they're not so tentative. And so they're kind of
punching above their weight. And of course the 303 Kosciuszko Squadron which is the famous, is the first operational
Polish squadron in the RAF that goes into the Battle of Britain. It ends up shooting down more aircraft than any other squadron in the RAF. - So real quick one here
from Joseph on Facebook, James, would you share your thoughts on these early Spitfires? Isn't the real hero of the
Battle of Britain, the hurricane? (speaks softly) Spitfire or hurricane James? - Okay, well, Spitfire is vastly superior to the hurricane and that's just a fact. The best fighter plane in 1940 is the Messerschmitt 109E 'cause
it can do what you need it to do in combat better than anyone else. 'Cause it can climb faster, it can dive faster and
impacts a bigger punch. So Spitfires and hurricanes are armed with eight Browning machine guns. Collectively those eight machine guns can fire a 14.7 seconds
worth of ammunition. Whereas an Emmy 109 has counter shelves which is substantially bigger. That's what you really need to knock down another aircraft rather
than the machine guns, which are sort of to a certain
extent kind of peashooters. And they have 80 cannon
shells and there cannons, but they also have 55 seconds
worth for machine guns. So what you can do
because you've got tracer a really good fighter
pilot in the Luftwaffe, he can get his bead with his machine guns and then fire one cannon shot and it's good night Charlie for that particular plane that's been hit. And also the point is that most of the engines
in the Daimler-Benz engines which powered the Messerschmitt
they're cast iron, whereas the Rolls-Royce Merlin for its total brilliance and is an
absolute amazing aero engine, is an alloy. And so, a single cannon shot kind of makes pretty short work of that. Whereas a point (speaks softly) if that hits the Daimler Benz, it just squashes it like
a pea it doesn't really have any effect whatsoever. So, famously 74 squadron fired something like 7,000 bullets of Dornier 17 and still didn't shoot it down. - Wow. - It could be quite hard. The Spitfire is much better because it has a much higher rate of climb and really the key things
to aerial combat in 1940, it's not like the days of the biplane area where
maneuverability is everything. By the 1930s, the key ingredient is speed. And to get the most of your speed, you want height because
if you can get height, you can maneuver yourself
around the sky, above the clouds that got the sun behind you
because if you're high enough, you're always going to be in sunlight. And that means that you
can see your enemy quicker. It means you can maneuver
so that you can attack out of the sun so that they can't see you when you're attacking. The combination of
coming down with height, gravitational pull combined
with engine speed means that you're coming in at a
rattled rate of speed, plus that element of surprise. That's your killer ingredient, most people are shot down
without seeing who shot him down. That's the best way to shoot someone down. Probably the Hurricane
is it's rate of climb is really feeble by 1940 standards. So they're concentrating
on shooting the bombers. And it is absolutely true
that Hurricanes shoot down more planes than the Spitfires do. That's because A there's more of them, and B because they got
bigger targets to hit which is bombers. The Spitfires are trying
to shoot down 109s and that's a harder job but
the 109 is definitely better. Now, don't get me wrong, the Hurricane absolutely
serves a purpose in 1940s. It's a rugged aircraft, it's
a very good gun platform, all those sorts of things. And it does very well before
it was (speaks softly) but it very quickly becomes obsolescent. And the thing about the Spitfire is that the Spitfire is at the beginning
of its development cycle in 1940. I mean, they very quickly realized that, yes, it does need cannons, they kind of completely changed the wing, put this teardrop on so
they can accommodate cannons because the wing of a
Spitfire is incredibly narrow. Whereas a Hurricane or a
Messerschmitt 109 wing is thick which means it can accommodate
the bulkier cannons. Obviously they can upgrade the Merlin and it can cope with that. And, the later Mark Spitfires are really quite different beasts from the Mart I Spitfire, but have certain
characteristics which are unique and the same and all the rest of it. And that's the brilliance of the Spitfire. The Hurricane is really a development of pre-war earlier Hawker Biplanes, if you look at them and
profile, compare them to a Hawken Nimrod, or
a Hertch or a Bulldog, or one of those things, you can see it basically
looks exactly the same. The fuselage is the same,
the tail plane is the same. The cockpit is much the same but it's a single stress
metal winged monoplane rather than a biplane and
that's the difference. And that's a good thing in 1940 because suddenly we were
a bit late to the party with monoplanes. And one of the problems with the Spitfire is the teething problems
because when you're developing a new aircraft, what takes
the time is developing the machine tools and the
labor force to make them. Once you've got all that set up, then you can start producing
them really quickly. But it's that whole process
of getting them going and building the machine
tools that will make the parts and getting everyone trained
up and setting up the factory, that's what takes the time. The advantage of the Hurricane
when they're suddenly trying to make a large number
of single-engine fighters in the late 1930s, is that a lot of the machine
tools can be used again, that they've already got, because they're already using them on earlier Marks of biplane. So the Hurricane is a
hero in a way because it enables to have a half
decent size of number of fighters and it does the job. But you can't isolate these things, collectively, these varying
cogs whether it be Radar, whether it be the Hurricane, whether it be the Spitfire or
it'd be ground controllers, whether it be the observer call, whether it be identification friend or foe whether it be (speaks
softly) whatever it is. Collectively, they add up to considerably more than the sum of
their individual parts. - I'm going to have to stop
you there, James Holland, we have reached the witching hour as we started (speaks softly) of noon here in Central Standard Time. I want to thank you so
much for this conversation. I think everybody listening, everybody watching right now gets an idea of why you're such a beloved figure at the National World War II Museum. But you do it, you say in style, but there's a lot of
substance behind it as well, James Holland, so thanks (speaks softly). Thanks for joining us today. - It's a privilege and an honor and it's always good to see you and anything for you guys. - All right, take care (speaks softly). I was going to say from the
National World War II Museum but it's from my beautifully
appointed living room of my apartment which is where
I'm viewing from right now. Everyone take care and
stay safe out there. Rob Citino signing off, bye bye.
