The Biggin Hill St. George’s RAF Chapel of Remembrance was built and dedicated by Winston Churchill himself as a permanent memorial to the 454 fallen airmen of the Royal Air Force during the Battle of Britain. There was no darker hour in the history of Britain or the world for that matter when “so much was owed to so few.”
Churchill knowing what was at stake often came out to Biggin Hill. “His Boys” in 1940 flew mission after mission in Spitfires and Hurricanes that lifted off from these airfields soaring overhead as Churchill himself often witnessed the takeoffs, standing on the grass gazing, looking up and then down, lost in a moment of silent personal prayer.
“His boys” were outnumbered in the air against Hitler’s Luftwaffe, fighting dog fight after dog fight they battled German Air Marshall Herman Goring’s Focke-Wulf F.W 200 and Messerschmitt ME. 100 heavy bombers, Heinkel HE. 111 light bombers, Junker Ju 111 Stukas and Messerschmitt ME. 109 fighters pounding the bomber formations and fighters successfully holding off the German invasion.
It was the darkest hour for the British Empire, who stood alone against Nazi Germany and their merciless bombings of city after city from which many pilots defending Britain never returned. The British Forces military chaplains gave service after service at the airfields, many times under fire, to men who in only minutes would mount up into their aircraft, never to return.
No Easy Day; No Tougher Job
The U.S. Navy SEALs have a motto saying there is “No Easy Day.” All well and good. It can be also be said that the British Forces military chaplains have “No tougher job.” Whether at the airfields of Biggin Hill, on the beaches at D-Day in Normandy or in the Japanese prison camps ministering to the soldiers, the truth is the Battle of Britain was won with the nation on their knees in prayer as well as in the air.
Churchill understood the debt owed the RAF pilots who flew from these airfields and built the Chapel of Remembrance in 1951. Now, it is in danger of being demolished in a half-baked development plan calling for its closure as well as the construction of an expensive and unnecessary new museum
Their Finest Hour Deserves Our Finest Efforts
In this generation, no one is asking for anyone to put their lives on the line for 454 RAF airmen who died defending their country 77 years earlier, but only to give their finest efforts to remember and to protect the chapel, its integrity and mission, and to treat it and the RAF pilots still alive with the utmost care and respect that would be a total credit to the lives and memory of the men who served.
Their finest hour deserve our finest efforts. It is our duty to remember we owe them a debt that can never be repaid.
For more information please go to: Protect Biggin Hill St. George’s RAF Chapel of Remembrance. {eoa}
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