The pilots of an RAF (Royal Air Force) fighter squadron that destroyed 73 enemy planes and damaged 38 others during the Battle of Britain crowd around a Hawker Hurricane with their canine mascot. Of England’s debt to the outnumbered pilots who defeated the Nazi Luftwaffe, Winston Churchill famously said: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” Ever since, the pilots who defended Britain during those crucial months in 1940 — Britons, Poles, Czechs, Yanks, Canadians, Aussies, and other volunteers from around the world — have been known, simply and affectionately, as The Few.
