It was the first, first-person account I'd ever read of the Battle of Britain, and my heart ached for the author (the youngest pilot to take part in the Battle). By now, the Luftwaffe was flying a new fighter aircraft, the Focke-Wulf Fw 190, superior in all but turn radius to the Spitfire V, and the squadron took heavy losses. Combining Sam walking to the replica Spitfire, the real thing taxiing, then Sam in close-up in the back seat of the YAK.

First Light: Dramatising the real Battle of Britain - BBC First Light: Dramatising the real Battle of Britain - BBC

Kent (Kentowski), Flt Lt Anthony Bartley, Mrs Wade, Flt Lt Robert Holland, Plt Off Trevor Wade and two unidentified ladies.His descriptions of aerial combat are vivid and gripping, written with an immediacy that is terrifying. In July 1942, Wellum was sent to Glasgow, where he participated in Operation Pedestal, a convoy mission to carry supplies for the relief of the besieged garrison at Malta.

First Light - Penguin Books UK

It was there that Wellum began his combat career, "chasing isolated German aircraft all over the south-west".Wellum led a flight of eight Spitfires to be carried on aircraft carrier HMS Furious, sailing from the Clyde to the Mediterranean, and then land them on the island. A battle-hardened ace by the winter of 1941, though still not out of his teens, 'Boy' Wellum flew scores of missions as fighter escort on bombing missions over France. He was dead right when he took one last long look at the schedule just before we began the shoot and, having considered the weather and all the other infinitely frightening variables, commented dryly: "We're going to have to be 100% lucky on this one!