Detailed text transcripts for TV channel - BBCNEWS - 20200712:15:46:00 archive.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from archive.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
a scottish airline pilot who contracted covid 19 in vietnam and was given just a 10% chance of survival is now on his way home. now on bbc news, this week marked the 80th anniversary of the start of the battle of britain, when the raf defended the country as nazi germany launched wave after wave of bombing raids over britain. the raf‘s young pilots held them off with their new fighter planes the spitfires and hurricanes. the aircraft became iconic, a symbol of britain s resilience under attack. but what has never been revealed before is the role that a school girl from london played in their success, as sophie raworth has been finding out in the schoolgirl who helped win a war. it s a wonderful aircraft, absolutely wonderful. it fitted you like a glove, you see, that s what i liked about it. without victory in the battle of britain, i think it s almost
wow! in we come to land. pilots reckoned that they could keep their sights on for about two seconds. so you had to find a way of bringing down an enemy bomber in just two seconds. tap of hammers in the spitfire factories. in 193a, as war with germany looked increasingly likely, the british government took what many thought to be an extraordinary decision. the new generation of fighters, they said, should be armed with not four but eight browning machine guns. newsreel: keep it up, mrs smith. or is it miss? the battle of britain is your battle, too. they s finally been persuaded by this man, a scientific officer in the air ministry called captain fred hill. he was convinced that withjust four guns, the planes being developed wouldn t have enough firepower to bring down
fred knew that a four gun design for the new fighters had already been agreed. if the plans were not changed quickly, it would be too late. so, it s 1934. you ve got the hurricane and the spitfire under development. but it s said that they only need four guns. you know they can catch the bombers, but now you ve got to be able to kill them, and you ve got three potential weapons available. one of them fires shells like this. this was a french hispano 20mm cannon, and it s obviously very tempting to go for these. this one hits an airframe, it s going to come down. though there are problems with it. in order to be able to fire them accurately, they ve got to have a very stiff mounting, and as you can imagine, the weapon itself is very large. so it s going to be difficult to find room in a spitfire wing,
absolutely sensational. being up here, the speed, the agility, the way the plane just. the pilot says you re almost flying it with your fingertips. ijust cannot imagine being up here in a dogfight. oh, my stomach! wooh! wow. i can feel the g force. look at that. it is such an elegant and agile fighter. speed and surprise were the key to its success. and, of course, its firepower. in we come to land. pilots reckoned that they could keep their sights on for about two seconds.