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14 Battles That Turned the Tide

Supermarine Spitfire, Battle of Britain, 1940

Supermarine Spitfire, Battle of Britain, 1940

A Spitfire fighter plane heads out over the English Channel on a mission. "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few," Winston Churchill famously said of England's debt to the outnumbered RAF pilots who defeated the German Luftwaffe. Ever since Churchill's speech, the Allied pilots who fought the Battle of Britain -- English, Poles, Czechs, Americans, Canadians, Aussies, and many others -- have been known simply as "The Few." See More in WWII: The Battle of Britain.

Photo: Fox Photos/Getty Images

ene 01, 1940