He provides accounts of take-offs and landings, dogfights, night flying, and flying in dreadful weather. It's very well-written and will give you a deeper appreciation for the sacrifices made by the Second World War generation. Geoffrey Wellum, author of First Light (2002), in which he looked back on his life as a Spitfire pilot in the second world war. I realize that, like leaving school, training days in the peaceful Cotswolds are over and I'm aware that Peter and I are going to be faced with total war in the air because presumably Churchill will fight on, and this Teutonic monster will hurl the might of his Luftwaffe on to this island with a view to invading. Combining Sam walking to the replica Spitfire, the real thing taxiing, then Sam in close-up in the back seat of the YAK.

First Light by Geoffrey Wellum - Penguin Books New Zealand First Light by Geoffrey Wellum - Penguin Books New Zealand

He fought throughout the Battle of Britain and through to the end of 1941 as the RAF started to conduct more operations over France, and after a spell as an instructor took part in Operation Pedestal to relieve Malta. Then cutting to his point of view shot in the real Spit, we get the hair-raising images of take-off. Soon after his arrival, 92 Squadron moved from Duxford in Cambridgeshire to Pembrey in Carmarthenshire. Mr Wellum has a wonderful way of telling a story and you can easily picture the details as you read his narrative.As a straight memoir, First Light would be a good book for the almost impressionist way it brings to life the stress and tension of being a front line fighter pilot during the Second World War.

First Light: Dramatising the real Battle of Britain - BBC First Light: Dramatising the real Battle of Britain - BBC

If England had fallen to Germany, the country could not have been used as the launching point for the D-Day landings and the liberation of Europe. Disappointed to be leaving frontline service, Wellum initially found the experience to be "almost unbearable". pictorial upper wrapper, the experiences of an RAF fighter pilot during WW2, joining aged 17 two months before the outbreak it covers his training and includes his service with 92 Squadron during the Battle of Britain, 65 Squadron at Debden as flight commander and in HMS Furious taking Spitfires out to Malta as part of Operation Pedestal, slight roll to lightly creased spine, a little rubbed at extrems. His descriptions of aerial combat are vivid and gripping, written with an immediacy that is terrifying.The true mark of a fighter pilot is not the number of enemies he's shot down or the way he flies his plane.

First Light on Vimeo First Light on Vimeo

Although there is an aching sense that Wellum himself is unsure of the answer, to the reader there is no doubt: that we live to read what you have written is testament to your life and its worth. I found the description of Wellum's flying training amusing and interesting and the air battles are, as one would expect, utterly exhilarating. Although he wrote it years later without referring to a personal journal (since he had not kept one) the experiences are like a fresh recounting of some recent event. This tells the vivid and at times moving portrait of a Spitfires pilots journey through, not just the Second World War, but also young adulthood and the fears and emotions felt by someone young who was involved in the conflict.It only seems a few weeks or so ago that I walked out of the school gates for the last time, but it can't have been a matter of weeks because I'm dressed up in a blue suit with a pair of wings on it. A battle-hardened ace by the winter of 1941, though still not out of his teens, 'Boy' Wellum flew scores of missions as fighter escort on bombing missions over France. In air combat over France, Wellum's number two, Freddie Haskett, was killed by a Fw 190, and Wellum himself survived only by "throwing the spit all over the sky without really looking round". The Germans were flying a formidable new fighter, the Focke-Wulf Fw 190, and Wellum was beginning to suffer from persistent headaches. The achievement is all the greater in that the other occupiers of that list were books I read when I was much younger, unmarked, and could receive deeper and more lasting impressions from the books I read.