"Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few," said Winston Churchill in praise of the pilots who took part in the Battle of Britain. But as the 66th anniversary of the firefight in the skies approaches, some of the country's top military historians have claimed it was the Royal Navy rather than the RAF that saved Britain from invasion by the Germans in the autumn of 1940.

The three military historians who run the high command course at the Joint Services Command and Staff College at Shrivenham, near Swindon, have concluded that the Battle of Britain became an overblown myth and that the credit for keeping Hitler at bay should have gone to the navy.

In an article published in the journal History Today, headlined Pie in the Sky, Andrew Gordon, head of maritime history at the college, said: "It really is time to put away this enduring myth. To claim that Germany failed to invade in 1940 because of what was done by phenomenally brave and skilled young men of Fighter Command is hogwash. The Germans stayed away because while the Royal Navy existed they had not a hope in hell of capturing these islands. The navy had ships in sufficient numbers to have overwhelmed any invasion fleet."

But Bill Bond, founder of the Battle of Britain Historical Society, said: "There's always somebody trying to rewrite this historical period. Most of it's nonsense. Without air cover the Luftwaffe bombers would have smashed all the ports. The divebombers would have just blasted navy ships out of the water. Unopposed, the Luftwaffe could have done what it liked. To suggest that the Battle of Britain is a myth is nonsense."