The first reason that Canada’s contribution was greater in the air than in the ground was because of the resources we gave to our alliance. The Second World War was a very technologically advanced war. There was a lot of mass-production of weapons, ammunition, vehicles, and other war material that was needed to win the battles. The war in the air took up a lot of these resources and cost a lot of money. The Canadian Air Force or the Royal Canadian Air Force/ RCAF at the beginning of the war as a small air force. In 1939 they had only 4000 people but by the end of the war, it grew to almost 250 000 men and women (Hundey, 216). The RCAF flew over Germany, the middle east of Europe and the far east of Europe. Also, they patrolled the cost of …show more content…
Canada also manufactured the actual planes, some examples of planes we built are the Lancaster, the Mosquito, Hawker Hurricane, and many more. This took up a lot of space, and during the war, the factory space need for these planes went from 500,000 square feets to around 14,000,000 square feet (Veterans Affairs Canada, N.pag). Before the war production in the aircraft industry was very low, around 4,000 military aircraft of year. But by the end of the war, the industry produced a lot of military aircraft around 120,000 a year (Veterans Affairs Canada, N.pag). But it was all worth it because Britain went into the war with 80,000 different types of vehicles, but 75, 000 of these were left behind when they rushed out of Dunkirk in 1940, leaving Britain with only 5,000 military vehicles (Veterans Affairs Canada, N.pag). So they turned to the RCAF because Canada had a lot of vehicles and they could replace what was lost. Of all the military vehicles and equipment we made only 21% was kept for Canada, 38% was given to Britain and the other 41% was distributed amongst the other allies (Veterans Affairs Canada, …show more content…
This can be seen in the Battle of Britain when Canada protect England. The battle of Britain was the battle that stopped the Luftwaffe from dominating the skies over England during World War 2 and there were hundreds of Canadian air flyers in the battle. The battle was from July 10th 1940 to October 31st, 1940 and it was fought mainly in the air. During the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940 allied fighter pilots fought off many bombing that was designed to destroy Britain’s morale and allow the Germans to invade Britain. The Germans focus all attacks mainly on the English Channel, and eventually, Hitler made the decision to go through with his plan called Operation Sea Lion and try to invade England. However, because of Canada and the Allies, the Germans did not invade Britain. They lost because, on September 15th, 1942 Germans launched 2 large aerial assaults both of which were defeated by the RAF/RCAF. Over 80 Luftwaffe planes were destroyed (March, N. pag)! After realizing that they were losing badly the Germans made the decision to forever postpone Operation Sea Lion and give up on trying to invade England, so Germany didn’t end up invading England.This is a very significant contribution because if it hadn’t been for Canada the Germans could have invaded