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Customer Reviews of First Light

The Battle of Britain through a reflector gunsight
I picked the English edition of this book up in London two weeks ago (it's Number Four on their best-seller list now). As a student of the Battle of Britain, this book was a real treat. I read it in conjunction with "Fighter Boys" (out now) and found the two works complimented each other very well. Wellum was the youngest operational Spitfire pilot in combat during the Battle, and his accounts of training and flying combat missions in the fall of 1940 are first-rate. His description of flying head-on into a formation of Heinkel 111 is the stuff of adventure novels -- only these events really happned and he lived to tell the tale.
The book falters a little toward the end. Although there are clues given that Wellum was sufferering from combat exhaustion, he tends to gloss over that portion of his service. The book ends rather abuptly as well. This is a shame because the bio tells us Wellum went on as a test pilot for Hawker Typhoons and Meteor jets. Given the author's success in detailing flying sequences, I would have loved to read more about his adventures in the cockpits of these rare airplanes.

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An Excellent Book
'First Light' is one of those books that is destined to be remembered as a "classic" and rightly so. This is a wonderful book of a young man who joined the Royal Air Force before the start of World War Two and who later fought during the Battle of Britain and survived. Most of the book is taken up with his training as a pilot and the fighting during the Battle of Britain. However the book continues on to cover his role in Operation Pedestal and the fighting over Malta until his return to England as a tired and worn out pilot.

I truly enjoyed Geoffrey Wellum's story of his training and chuckled a good many times whilst reading about one thing or another. Mr Wellum has a wonderful way of telling a story and you can easily picture the details as you read his narrative. I found myself amazed as I read the book of how much this young man and his friends suffered in defending their country and their mates in the air.

This is an account that anyone who has an interest in WW2 aviation will be delighted in. It's well told, full of humor, sadness, and death defying flying and combat action. These men, as young as 18, flew one of the fastest and deadliest aircraft at the time and many didn't make it through the campaign or even their first mission. You read with sadness the loss of many good pilots and friends but still the men continue flying day after day facing terrible odds.

I really enjoyed the author's style of writing, he was witty, descriptive and came across with a sense of telling a story with understated facts. He downplayed his own role during the Battle of Britain and I was really hooked on the narrative as it moved along at a cracking pace. I found it hard to put the book down late at night, which brought forth a moan from my wife about turning the lamp off or else!

This is a great story and in finishing I would like to add the following comment from a great historian about this book: "A work of exceptional quality.....his prose has a passion and immediacy which make it compelling reading" - Max Hastings. He's not wrong either!

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An excellent first-hand account of being a spitfire pilot
I fully agree what Mark Hopper had to say in his review. For me the book was definitely 'life-changing'. I know from history how important and vital the Battle of Britain was, but seeing the battle portrayed in films and reading it in history books just didn't have the impact as Geoffrey Wellum's account. He's certainly the person who sits on my 'hero pedestal' now. Please write some more Geoffrey and detail for us how the rest of the war was for you. How did the war affect your life in subsequent years? Did you marry Grace? You have done all your old friends and comrades a great service by writing this book. Well done and thank you.