The Battle of Britain Five Months That Changed History, May—October 1940 by James Holland (z-lib.org).epub

1 SD was the Nazi abbreviation of the Sicherheitsdienst, the Nazi secret
intelligence service. On the whole, Germans preferred abbreviations to
acronyms, unlike the British. ‘Nazi’ is also an abbreviation – of National
Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei, the German National Socialist
Workers’ Party.
2 From 1926 to 1938, Messerschmitts were given the abbreviation ‘Bf’,
which stood for Bayerische Flugzeugwerke, the name of the aircraftmanufacturing
company at which Professor Willi Messerschmitt was the
chief designer. However, in 1938, the company was reconstituted as
Messerschmitt AG, and from then on Messerschmitt aircraft were given the
prefix ‘Me’. Despite this, aircraft dating from the Bayerische
Flugzeugwerke days were still known as Bf 109s and Bf 110s etc. In this
book, however, I shall stick with ‘Me’ throughout.
3 The ‘deck’ is the ground.
4 Wever was appointed Chief of the Air Command Office when he joined
the Luftwaffe in 1933, which made him effectively Chief of Staff. He was
not, however, officially given that title at the time.
5 Figures vary slightly between those given by the War Office, the Dover
Report and the Admiralty. The War Office figures are considered the most
accurate and are the ones used here.
6 There is some debate over who wrote this. Harold Nicolson claimed to
have penned it, but then so did the art historian Kenneth Clark, one of his
colleagues at the Ministry of Information. The original document, however,
seems to have been written by Nicolson, but then refined by Clark.
7 The British called all Axis motor torpedo boats ‘E-boats’.
8 Auxiliary Fire Service.
9 John Cunningham became the most famous RAF night-fighter of them
all, nicknamed ‘Cat’s Eyes’ Cunningham and scoring twenty victories, of
which nineteen were at night.