First Light

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An extraordinarily deeply moving and astonishingly evocative story. Reading it, you feel you are in the Spitfire with him, at 20,000ft, chased by a German Heinkel, with your ammunition gone Independent There have been countless war memoirs and books about the Battle of Britain. Why another one? This one has some significant differences that make it a compelling read. Surprisingly, “First Light” was first published more than 60 years after the events described within. At just 18 years of age, the author Geoffrey Wellum was the youngest RAF pilot to fight action during the Battle of Britain. He would eventually become the youngest Spitfire pilot in the prestigious 92 Squadron. Unlike most war memoirs, his training takes up more than a third of the book. Despite the delay in publishing the book, Wellum had jotted down notes in an exercise book at the time—something that would give his account unusual depth and quality. Wellum's real achievement is to make the reader experience with him the sheer difficulty of learning to fly along with its many dangers.

First Light by Geoffrey Wellum | Waterstones

There have been countless books about the Battle of Britain. But the combination of immediacy - Geoffrey Wellum had jotted down notes in an exercise book at the time - and distance - another 35 years would pass before he expanded his notes into a narrative - gives this account extraordinary depth and resonance . . . First Light will rank among the finest of Second World War memoirs Tony Gould, Independent Geoff watched these scenes with great interest and said that he felt the film perfectly caught the mood and emotions he felt at the time, both on the ground and in the air.What the book may have benefited from is some more detail on the later career of the author, following on from the Battle of Britain. However, it is realistic to assume that this period is somewhat blurred in the authors memory. In First Light, Geoffrey Wellum tells the inspiring, often terrifying true story of his coming of age amid the roaring, tumbling dogfights of the fiercest air war the world had ever seen. And, I guess, is just about as close as any of us would want to get to the nerve-jangling terrors of air combat, Battle of Britain style. He retired from the RAF in 1961 to take up a position with a firm of commodity brokers in the City of London until his retirement to Cornwall where he still lived when ‘First Light’ was published in 2002.

First Light: The Phenomenal Fighter Pilot Bestseller (The First Light: The Phenomenal Fighter Pilot Bestseller (The

One plane was brown and green, the other brown and grey. And the real one was based at Wycombe air park and our replica was 80 miles away on the drama set outside Dunstable. Wellum suffered severe combat fatigue after three years' intensive flying, because of the immense strain that frontline British fighter pilots were put under during that period. He returned from Malta to Britain, becoming a test pilot on the Hawker Typhoon, based at Gloster Aircraft.Geoffrey Wellum was born in Walthamstow, and educated at Forest School, Snaresbrook. Aged seventeen, he joined the RAF on a short-service commission in August 1939 and served with 92 Squadron throughout the Battle of Britain. In March 1942 he went to 65 Squadron at Debden as a Flight Commander and from there to Malta later that year. He led a group of eight Spitfires off HMS Furious to Luqa during Operation Pedestal. As needs must the conveyor belt thrust G.W. into the front line of the summer of 1940 over the skies of southern England. 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. By late September the Battle of Britain was over, and the blitz, the night-time onslaught on the country’s urban centres, was under way. For Wellum and his comrades the intensity eased, as Spitfires were unsatisfactory nightfighters, and the squadron moved into winter quarters at Manston in Kent. During the battle he had shot down a Heinkel He 111 bomber, and claimed a quarter share in a Ju 88. That November there were two damaged Bf 109s, and one shared. Another Bf 109 was claimed in 1941, and there may have been more, as he was not one greatly concerned with recording such things.