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Historical calendar/ What happened on September 15

2023-09-15 08:26:00, Blog CNA

Historical calendar/ What happened on September 15

Illustrative photo

1940 - The Battle of Britain begins

On September 15, Nazi Germany's air force, the Luftwaffe, launched 2 major attacks on London. Believing that the British Air Force, RAF, was close to collapse, the attacks were a repeat of their devastating attack just 8 days earlier.

That same day, Prime Minister Winston Churchill visited the headquarters of the RAF Pilots' Central Command. The first attack wave of about 250 bombers began at 11:00. While many Luftwaffe aircraft were shot down by the RAF, about half reached London dropping their cargo.

A second wave of strikes involving roughly the same number of aircraft took place at around 2pm and is believed to have targeted South London and the railways linking it to Kent. The attacks continued during the night. During the attacks that day, the RAF managed to damage many of the German bomber formations.

Historical calendar/ What happened on September 15

This meant that when the surviving planes dropped their payloads, the shells fell over a wide area and were less damaging. The RAF claimed to have shot down 185 German aircraft. It was actually only 61, but still the heaviest losses the Luftwaffe had suffered in over a month.

The RAF itself lost 31 aircraft. Although fighting continued for several more weeks, and British cities were bombed sporadically for the rest of World War II, German tactics to achieve air superiority before a possible invasion of the island failed.

Sunday 15 September marked a clear and decisive defeat for the Luftwaffe. It abandoned daytime bombing on 30 September, although night attacks continued until May 1941. The Battle of Britain would go down in history as a turning point in World War II.

Other important events

1835 - The ship "HMS Beagle" with Charles Darwin on board arrives at the Galapagos Islands. The expedition would last several years and would be essential for the drafting of the famous thesis of evolution by the British naturalist.

1928 - Scottish bacteriologist Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin while studying the influenza virus.

1935 - The Nuremberg Laws are adopted in Germany. They would deprive German Jews of citizenship. They also banned marriages or sexual relations between Jews and "citizens of German blood or relatives", and made the swastika (broken cross) an official symbol of Nazi Germany. The Nuremberg Laws would culminate in the Holocaust.

1943 - Benito Mussolini forms a new fascist government in Italy, declaring the Republic of Salò.

1950 - United Nations troops land in Incheon, South Korea, repelling an invasion by North Korean troops during the Korean War.

1959 - Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev arrives in the US to begin a 13-day visit./ Adapted from CNA