The eternal BS of higher headquarters: An example from German pilots in 1940

One of the eternals of combat is that
frontline fighters will always feel betrayed by the BS being peddled by top
leaders. I thought of this when I read that during the summer of 1940, the
German leaders kept saying that the Royal Air Force was on the verge of
collapse. It didn't feel that way to Luftwaffe pilots, who
supposedly would radio each other sarcastically as they crossed the British
coast, "Here they come again, the last fifty
British fighters."

The RAF did take a beating that summer,
of course. I was surprised to see that the majority of Australian pilots flying
for the RAF were killed -- that is, 14 of 22, according to Len Deighton's Battle of Britain. (Other sources offer
different numbers.) By contrast, Deighton's chart shows that 418 of the 2,543
British-born aircrew members were lost.