[2][3] The song's lyrics are written from the viewpoint of a British RAF pilot fighting during the Battle of Britain (1940), the first military engagement to be fought entirely with aircraft.

[5][6] It is featured in the video game Madden NFL 10, the MTV show Nitro Circus, and Steve Peat's segment in the mountain bike film New World Disorder III.

The music video, filmed in Poland in September of 1984 during the World Slavery Tour and directed by Jim Yukich, was accompanied with footages of The Battle of Britain as seen on newsreels.

The footages were later re-used as the startup for every Iron Maiden concert in the stage screens to accompany the background music (mixing both Churchill's speech and the snippet of the original song.)

As seen in concert videos such as Live After Death and Iron Maiden: Flight 666, it is usually preceded by Winston Churchill's "We shall fight on the beaches" speech with the sound of planes in the background.