Since Mrs. Kong and I share our countrymen’s odd fascination with British royalty, we have been binge watching The Crown on Netflix. Or as I like to call it “Keeping up with the Windsors”.
Now I am not normally one to get animated while watching television. In fact, it’s all I can do to stay half the time. However one episode of The Crown had me get rather agitated and start yelling at the television.
In 1955, Princess Margaret was basically forced to cancel her engagement to marry Group Captain Peter Townsend.
The royal family is pretty much a brand, and they are very very protective of their brand image.
Due to some law passed around the time of George III (remember him?) Princess Margaret was not allowed to marry without consent of pretty much everybody: the Queen, the Church of England and Parliament.
The problem was he was divorced, and the Church of England still considered divorce to be “icky” in 1955. I think he was also a commoner, and we can’t have commoners spreading their cooties around the palace. Don’t quote me on that last one as I’m a Yank and not quite up to speed on the British class system.
What’s the point of being royalty if you can’t even pick who you get to marry? Seems like a silly system to this Yank.
Factor in the Margaret was in the line of succession to the throne and the monarch is the head of the Church of England, and it was a no-go. Margaret could have given up everything and had a civil marriage, but that’s not much of a choice if you ask me.
Maybe someone could come up with a form of government where church and state are separate but I realize that’s crazy talk.
Townsend was basically shipped off to Brussels to serve as air attaché , and presumably to get him out of the way. Margaret ultimately gave up and publicly cancelled the engagement. Seemed like a raw deal all around to me.
Now granted, I am applying the outlook of an American in the year 2020 to something that happened in 1950’s England.
With that in mind I will have to apply my usual level of tact and diplomacy to it.
In other words:
Bollocks! I say!
So what is it about this scandal from 65 years ago that had me yelling at the television?
Because if it hadn’t been for Group Captain Townsend and others like him there wouldn’t have been a bloody England any more!
In those darkest hours of 1940, when the Nazi war machine seemed unstoppable. When the United States still sat on the sidelines. When Hitler had yet to attack Russia. When the German military had crushed France and forced the British army to flee the continent. When the Luftwaffe was raining bombs down on British cities every night. When the Wehrmacht was massing in France for the inevitable invasion of England.
When all of that was happening, Peter Townsend climbed into his fighter and hurled himself at the waves of attacking German aircraft.
Again, and again, and again.
For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an` Chuck him out, the brute! "
But it's " Saviour of 'is country " when the guns begin to shoot;
Tommy, Rudyard Kipling 1890
There’s only so much I can add to the volumes already written about the Battle of Britain. Just let me sum it up as literally do-or-die. If they had failed, the royal family would probably have been doing Hitler’s laundry and Goering would have had his feet propped up on Churchill’s desk, smoking his cigars.
The King would have died while wielding Excalibur in a last ditch defense of the palace. Hey, it’s my alternate history! I’ll write it like I want to. (Dr. Who writers at BBC are you listening?)
And the Church of England?
Sie sind jetzt die Kirche von Deutschland!
(You are now the Church of Germany!)
But they didn’t fail because of brave souls like Group Captain Townsend.
So yeah, he’s divorced. Make an exception you silly sods. I say if you fight in the Battle of Britain, the princess can marry you if she wants. I didn’t see you out there fighting off the Luftwaffe Archbishop!
Nice cathedral you got there, by the way. It’d be a bloody shame if some Nazi turned it into his summer home.
“Did he fly a Spitfire?” Mrs. Kong asked.
“No, a Hurricane. It wasn’t even a Spitfire. It was made out of wood.”
“Oh.”
Now I stretched that a bit for dramatic effect. The Hurricane was mostly constructed of metal with some wood and fabric left over from the days when planes were built that way.
While overshadowed by the more glamorous Spitfire, there were roughly twice as many Hurricanes in service during the Battle of Britain. Hurricanes accounted for roughly sixty percent of German losses in the battle.
That was the first time we realized we could be beaten and we were beaten and we didn't like it.
German general Gerd von Runstedt
If you want to make a case for “the plane that saved the world” I would give the award to the chunky little Hurricane and not the sleek, sexy Spitfire.
While 30-40 mph slower than the German BF-109, the Hurricane could out turn the German fighter. The two were matched closely enough that the outcome came down to skill and tactics. While not as good as a Spitfire, a Hurricane was good enough when good enough was desperately needed.
The Hurricane was easier to produce than the Spitfire and over 14,000 were built, serving in all theaters of the war. Some were even flown by the Soviets under lend lease.
A Hurricane in the hands of Peter Townsend was more than good enough, however.
I was unable to find a source for his total number of kills but he was credited with the first German plane to be shot down over England. While protecting a convoy in 1940 he shot down 4 aircraft in a single engagement and while his squadron destroyed at least ten. Don’t let his dapper looks fool you. He was a total badass.
Townsend himself was forced to ditch in the Channel once and was once shot down and wounded by a Bf-110, losing his big toe to a cannon shell.
Townsend proved to be a very capable squadron commander and accumulated an impressive list of awards:
Commander of the Royal Victorian Order
Distinguished Service Order
Distinguished Flying Cross with bar Mentioned in Dispatches
(That last one means someone felt he was important enough to be singled out in official dispatches)
But as we said in the USAF, one “Oh sh*t!” cancels a hundred “Attaboys!” He was divorced and that was that. Now go sit behind a desk in Brussels and stay away from the royals.
In 1959 Townsend married Marie-Luce Jamagne, a young woman he met in Belgium. She was 20 years his junior. Princess Margaret famously married photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones in 1960.
Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.
(Now get out of the palace! You’re stinking up the place!)