They possessed the best batsman in Alastair Cook, the most successful bowler in James Anderson and a management team of head coach Andy Flower and captain Andrew Strauss who scarcely put a foot wrong.
England outplayed a team who have dominated world cricket for the past 15 years in all departments of the game.
Strauss joins Len Hutton as the only English captains to win an Ashes series home and away against a full-strength Australian side in a five-match series.
Five months ago Cook was playing for his Test place. Now the former choirboy with the streak of steel and insatiable hunger for runs occupies a place in the record books alongside the giants of the game.
He scored 235 not out in Brisbane to save a match Australia had dominated, 148 in Adelaide to set up an England victory, and 189 in Sydney to extinguish the home side’s last faint hopes of levelling the series.
Cook batted more than 36 hours, longer than anybody in a five-match series, and his Ashes series aggregate of 766 is second only to the great Wally Hammond’s 905 in 1928-29.