First Light: The Phenomenal Fighter Pilot Bestseller
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'An intimate account . . . rich in detail' James Holland
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Two months before the outbreak of the Second World War, eighteen-year-old Geoffrey Wellum becomes a fighter pilot with the RAF . . .
Desperate to get in the air, 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.
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'It took him 35 years to turn his notebooks into a narrative, and the result is a highly personal account of what it is like to face mortal combat, day and night, and what it does to a man who is barely more than a boy' Ben Macintyre, author of The Spy and the Traitor
'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
'Vivid, wholly convincing, compelling. One of the best memoirs for years about the experience of flying in war' Max Hastings
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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.
Returning to England, Wellum became a test pilot on Typhoons at Gloster Aircraft. He later became a gunnery instructor until the end of the war. He stayed in the RAF after 1945, serving in Germany as a staff officer, followed by a four-year tour of duty with 192 Squadron. Wellum left 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. He died in July 2018, aged ninety-six.