2. Neither side’s military leaders believed that an invasion was imminent
After the fall of France and the British evacuation from Dunkirk, the German High Command, though it went forward with planning, considered a cross channel invasion of the British Isles only as a last resort to force British surrender after the RAF was destroyed. The threat of invasion was exaggerated by Churchill in his public rhetoric (much of it aimed at audiences in the United States), and privately he informed the War Cabinet that a German invasion was unlikely and that it would be “suicidal” for the Germans to attempt to support an invading force without naval superiority. To Churchill, who gave the upcoming fight its name, the Battle of Britain, in a speech before it began, the issue was always to be settled in the air. The RAF was well equipped for the type of battle that emerged before the Blitz began.
RAF fighters included the workhorse Hawker Hurricane, which had proven to be inferior to the German Messerschmidt Bf-109 over France, and a growing number of Supermarine Spitfires, which had proven to be the equal of the German aircraft. England’s shortage of trained pilots was eased with the arrival of airmen from around its vast empire, and they were supported by exiled pilots from some of the nations the Germans had overrun, including Poles, Czechs, Dutch, Belgians, and French. The Germans went forward with the attack focused on the destruction of the RAF, while simultaneously destroying coastal shipping and port facilities. There was no initial planning for the random bombing of cities and civilian areas put forward by either side.