Book description
'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
Two months before the outbreak of WWII, seventeen year old Geoffrey
Wellum left school to become a fighter pilot with the RAF. He made it
through basic training to become the youngest Spitfire pilot in the
prestigious 92 Squadron. Thrust into combat almost immediately, Wellum
found himselfflying several sorties a day, caught up in terrifying
dogfights with German Me 109s.
Published more than fifty years afterwards, FIRST LIGHT is Geoffrey
Wellum's gripping memoir of his experiences as a fighter pilot during WWII.
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.
