First Light
Author(s): Geoffrey Wellum
352 pages Two months before the outbreak of WWII, seventeen-year-old Geoffrey Wellum leaves school to become a fighter pilot with the RAF. Bursting with youthful energy and enthusiasm, he makes it through basic training to become the youngest Spitfire pilot in the prestigious 92 Squadron. Thrust into combat almost immediately, Wellum finds himself flying several sorties a day, caught up in terrifying dogfights with German Me 109s. Over the coming months he and his fellow pilots play a crucial role in the Battle of Britain. But of the friends that take to the air alongside Wellum many never return. Published for the first time more than fifty years after the war, First Light is Geoffrey Wellum's gripping memoir of his experiences as a fighter pilot.
General Information
- :
- : pengui
- : pengui
- : 0.284
- : 01 May 2003
- : United Kingdom
- : books
Other Specifications
- : Geoffrey Wellum
- : Paperback
- : 352
- : 16pp b&w photographs
More About The Product
'An extraordinary, deeply moving and astonishingly evocative story. Reading it, you feel you are in the Spitfire with him, at 20,000 feet, chased by a German Heinkel, with your ammunition gone' Independent
Geoffrey Wellum joined the RAF in 1939 when he was just seventeen years old and served with 92 Squadron throughout the Battle of Britain. In 1942 he went to 65 Squadron at Debden as a Flight Commander and from there to Malta later that year. He led eight Spitfires off HMS Furious to Luqa during Operation Pedestal. He now lives in Mullion in Cornwall and has three children.
