War in the Skies: The Pilots Who Fought Above the Clouds

My grandfather was a fighter pilot. He flew Spitfires during the Battle of Britain. When I was a kid, he took me to an air show. A Spitfire flew overhead, and I watched his face. He was somewhere else entirely. The air war had its own kind of romance, I suppose. But it was brutal too. Pilots went from training to combat in weeks. The average lifespan of a Spitfire pilot during the Battle of Britain was four weeks. Four weeks. They lived in dispersal huts at the edge of airfields. When the siren went, they ran to their planes. Up into the sky, into a swirling mess of dogfights. You either developed quick instincts or you died. The Germans had the Messerschmitt 109, a formidable opponent. But the Spitfire turned tighter, and that made all the difference. The Battle of Britain was the first major campaign fought entirely in the air. If the Germans had won, they would have invaded England. But they didn't win. The few, Churchill called them. Never have so many owed so much to so few. He was right.