This aerial showdown was a decisive moment in the fate of Western civilization. Adolf Hitler�s Nazi armies had moved unhindered from Berlin to the beaches of Normandy with little resistance. While Russia honored a tenuous peace pact with the Third Reich, the Fuhrer had his eyes fixed on the island of Great Britain, the last holdout of resistance against his vision of European conquest.
The British government knew that they had to hold, not only for the preservation of their way of life, but also in the knowledge that should the United States ever enter the war, the Allied forces would need the British Isles as a staging ground for their armies. Without Britain to operate from, no opposing force could ever gain a foothold to defeat Hitler.
In their Spitfire and Hurricane fighters, the outnumbered and weary R.A.F. pilots defended the skies daily and sometimes hourly against the numerically superior German Luftwaffe. Casualty rates were high and many pilots lost their lives in the skies over Great Britain, defending her valiantly from the Nazi insurgence.
Not all of these men were British. Many pilots from around the globe answered the call and volunteered their lives to save Great Britain and her people from the dark fate that had befallen the rest of Europe so suddenly. Exiled Polish and Czechoslovakian pilots, having escaped from their own now-invaded countries, took to the skies as part of Churchill's "few." Canadian, Australian, New Zealanders, and South African pilots also flew in England's defense. The R.A.F. in 1940 was composed of freedom fighting volunteers from all nations.
Into this aerial inferno, a handful of Americans also flew. Whatever their reasons for risking their lives in and for a foreign land, be they ideological or emotional, the facts are irrefutable. They risked loss of citizenship and imprisonment to fight Hitler's tyranny while their own country was still riding the fence of neutrality. Before the Flying Tigers took to the air in China, before the bombs dropped on Pearl Harbor, a small group of U.S. pilots, some of them risking life and limb on the journey itself, made their way to Britain and became the first Americans to oppose the Axis powers.
Three of these men, survivors of the Battle of Britain, would go on to become the first members of the legendary Eagle Squadrons, formed specially for the American pilots in the R.A.F. Each made the ultimate sacrifice before the end of 1941. To these three men, Red Tobin, Shorty Keough, and Andy Mamedoff, is this webpage dedicated. May it serve as a repository for information on these brave men and their participation in history's greatest battle in the sky and may they never be forgotten.
