Spitfire Ace

This interesting volume, published by England's Channel 4 Books, revisits the Battle of Britain but with a twist. Sparked by an encounter with a two-seat Spitfire, television producer Martin Davidson decided to create a TV show featuring two young English lads who would undergo the pilot training received by their contemporaries back in 1940. That experiment, in turn, led Davidson and James Taylor to research the Battle of Britain with particular emphasis on those surviving Spitfire aces who flew in the Battle. SPITFIRE ACE is the story of those intertwining threads. The bulk of SPITFIRE ACE is given over to the BoB. The authors detail the history of the RAF in the 1930s, its organization, the commanders who led it in the successful repulse of the Luftwaffe in 1940, RAF training and equipment, the development of radar, the birth of the Spit and the Hurricane, etc. Included in this are lengthy reminiscences by RAF pilots like Bob Doe, Nigel Rose, Peter Brothers, Gerald Stapleton, George Unwin, Billy Drake and Allan Wright that provide an insider's view of that important period of history. Around all that is woven descriptions of the selection of four Englishmen, the willowing down of the four to two and then one, personal comments by the four and so on. The Battle of Britain has been written about endlessly. SPITFIRE ACE presents a pretty standard history of the Battle and preceding events; no new revelations here. Its main strength is the comments from the pilots and groundcrew which put a very human face on those long-ago events. The Channel 4 "competition," by contrast, is pretty straightforward, interesting but not as much as the BoB material. The book features dozens of vintage and contemporary b & w and color photographs, maps and diagrams. In short, SPITFIRE ACE is an appealing and unique combination of Royal Air Force history then-and-now. Recommended.