GREAT AVIATION QUOTES
Winston Churchill


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There are 23 quotes matching Winston Churchill in the collection:



They had bombed London, whether on purpose or not, and the British people and London especially should know that we could hit back. It would be good for the morale of us all.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill

Ordering the RAF to start bombing German cities, quoted in Winston’s War: Churchill, 1940-1945, 25 August 1940.

Air predominance affords the possibility of striking at both. It can either paralyse the enemy’s military action or compel him to devote to the defence of his bases and communications a share of his straitened resources far greater that what we need in the attack.

Winston Churchill

The World Crisis, Volume III: 1916-1918, pubished in 1927.

Who is in charge of the clattering train?
The axles creak, and the couplings strain.
For the pace is hot, and the points are near,
And Sleep hath deadened the driver's ear;
And signals flash through the night in vain.
Death is in charge of the clattering train!

Edwin James Milliken

First two and last four lines of a uncredited poem published in Punch magazine 4 October 1890. Now attributed to Milliken, a former engineer who became a writer and was at the time an editor at Punch. The full poem and a cartoon were published following a damning report on working conditions on the railway following a fatal accident, the driver and stoker working for over 16 hours causing them to be “asleep, or nearly so”, so missing stop signals and crashing into a freight train.
The six lines here were quoted by Sir Winston Churchill in the first volume of his epic six-volume history of World War II, The Gathering Storm (1948) to illustrate a nation asleep at the wheel.

Death and his brother sleep

The problem of the use of aeroplanes was a most important one, and we should place ourselves in communication with Mr. Wright, and avail ourselves of his knowledge.

Winston Churchill

Then a junior member of the British Government’s Committee of Imperial Defence, 25 February 1909. Quoted by Sir Martin Gilbert in The Fifth Churchill Lecture: Churchill and Bombing Policy, at The George Washington University, Washington D.C., 18 October 2005.

It has been reserved for us to see flying a commonplace and ordinary event. That is a great fact, because no one can doubt that the development and discovery of the flying art definitely enlarges the boundaries of human activity. One cannot doubt that flying, to judge from the position which it has reached even today, must in the future exercise a potent influence, not only upon the habits of men, but upon the military destinies of states.

Winston Churchill

Speech at the Royal Aero Club dinner, Savoy Hotel, London. 4 March 1914. Quoted in 2005 book by his granson Wonston S. Churchill Never Give In! The Best of 's Speeches.

Nothing but the supreme stimulus of war considerations, and nothing but the large and generous flood of money which the taxpayer can provide, will carry aviation forward to the foremost place in the world.

Winston Churchill

Speaking to the Royal Aero Club at the Savoy hotel. Quoted in Flight magazine, 7 March 1914.

The air is an extremely dangerous, jealous and exacting mistress. Once under the spell most lovers are faithful to the end, which is not always old age. Even those masters and princes of aerial fighting, the survivors of fifty mortal duels in the high air who have come scatheless through the War and all its perils, have returned again and again to their love and perished too often in some ordinary commonplace flight undertaken for pure amusement.

Sir Winston Churchill

In The Air, Thoughts and Adventures, 1932.

Air power may either end war or end civilization.

Winston Churchill

House of Commons, 14 March 1933.

Not to have an adequate air force in the present state of the world is to compromise the foundations of national freedom and independence.

Winston Churchill

House of Commons, 14 March 1933.

May it not also be that the cause of civilization itself will be defended by the skill and devotion of a few thousand airmen? There never has been, I suppose, in all the world, in all the history of war, such an opportunity for youth. The Knights of the Round Table, the Crusaders, all fall back into the past — not only distant but prosaic.

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill

Speech delivered to the Houses of Commons, 4 June 1940. This was in the famous ‘we shall fight on the beaches’ speech, that ended:

“Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”

Churchill speech

What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect the Battle of Britain is about to begin . . Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, his was their finest hour.

Prime Minster Winston Churchill

Speech to the House of Commons, 18 June 1940.

When I look round to see how we can win the war, I see that there is only one sure path. We have no continental army which can defeat the German military power. The blockade is broken and Hitler has Asia and probably Africa to draw from. Should he be repulsed here or not try invasion, he will recoil eastward, and we have nothing to stop him. But there is one thing that will bring him back and bring him down, and that is an absolutely devastating, exterminating attack by very heavy bombers from this country upon the Nazi homeland. We must be able to overwhelm them by this means, without which I do not see a way through. We cannot accept any lower aim than air mastery. When can it be obtained?

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill

Letter to Minister of Aircraft Production Lord Beaverbrook, 8 July 1940. The Churchill Documents, Volume 15: Never Surrender, May 1940 – December 1940.

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.

Prime Minster Winston Churchill

House of Commons, 20 August 1940. The Royal Air Force has been known as 'the few' ever since. Max Hastings in his book Winston’s War: Churchill, 1940-1945 states that Churchill came up with the phrase a few days earlier on 16 August, after visiting Fighter Command's 11 Group operation room. His chief of staff 'Pug' Ismay made some remark in the car riding back to Chequers, and Churchill said, “don’t speak to me. I have never been so moved.” After a few minutes silence, he first spoke the classic line.

The Few
He may have been influenced by Sir John Moore’s declaration about the capture of Corsica in 1793, “Never was so much done by so few men”.

This great aviation quote is often changed by writers and speakers, giving us material such as ‘Never … was so much owed by so few to so many,’ seen after the Falklands War. Others have wondered if Churchill was referring to the RAF’s bar tab.

The Navy can lose us the war, but only the Air Force can win it. Therefore our supreme effort must be to gain overwhelming mastery in the Air. The Fighters are our salvation … but the Bombers alone provide the means of victory… . In no other way at present visible can we hope to overcome the immense military power of Germany.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill

Memorandum for the Cabinet, 3 September 1940.

From now on we shall bomb Germany on an ever-increasing scale, month by month, year by year, until the Nazi regime has either been exterminated by us or — better still — torn to pieces by the German people themselves.

Prime Minster Winston Churchill

14 July 1941.

In the early stages of the fight Mr. Winston Churchill spoke with affectionate raillery of me and my “Chicks.” He could have said nothing to make me more proud; every Chick was needed before the end.

ACM Sir Hugh Dowding

Dispatch to the Secretary of State for Air, 20 August 1941.

See one other Hugh Dowding great aviation quote.

Victory, speedy and complete, awaits the side which first employs air power as it should be employed. Germany, entangled in the meshes of vast land campaigns, cannot now disengage her air power for a strategically proper application. She missed victory through air power by a hair's breadth in 1940 … We ourselves are now at the crossroads.

Air Marshal Sir Arthur 'Bomber' Harris

Opening of letter to Winston Churchill, 17 June 1942.

See eight other Arthur 'Bomber' Harris great aviation quotes.

We sought no mercy and would show no mercy. We hoped to shatter twenty German cities as we had shattered Cologne, Lübeck, Düsseldorf and so on. If need be, as the war went on, we hoped to shatter almost every dwelling in almost every German city.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill

Meeting with Stalin, August 1942. He told Stalin that Britain looked upon German morale “as a military target.” Quoted by Sir Martin Gilbert in The Fifth Churchill Lecture: Churchill and Bombing Policy, at The George Washington University, Washington D.C., 18 October 2005.

Even the most eminent persons are subject to the laws of gravity.

Winston Churchill

While Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, while allowing himself to be buckled into a seatbelt for a flight from Athens to Naples, 28 December 1944. Quoted in Max Hastings’ Winston’s War: Churchill, 1940-1945.

It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed. Otherwise we shall come into control of an utterly ruined land … The destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of Allied bombing … I feel the need for more precise concentration upon military objectives, such as oil and communications behind the immediate battle-zone, rather than on mere acts of terror and wanton destruction, however impressive.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill

Memo to Charles Portal, Chief of the Air Staff and the Chiefs of Staff Committee, 28 March 1945. Under pressure from Air Chief Marshal Arthur Harris, Portal and others, Churchill withdrew his memo and issued a new one on 1 April 1945 omitting the words “acts of terror.”


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