First Light (The Centenary Collection)

Excellent first person account of the Battle of Britain but not the best I've read. If you're looking for something with a little more of the overall picture, try Fly For Your Life by Robert Stanford Tuck. Tuck's book is definitely the best memoir on the Battle of Britain I've come across and one of the best WW II books I've ever read.

I enjoyed First Light immensely. Geoffery Wellum gives a personal account of his training and combact experiences in British Spitfire. Wellum must have used a diary to be able to retain the information in such detail. As a reader, it felt like I was right there along with him as he trained, transferred and fought in dogfights against German Fighters, usually the ME 109 Merrschmidt. I recommend First Light, a very readable account of his WW2 experience as a Spitfire pilot.

You'd think that after 50 years, all the worthwhile first-person there-I-was accounts of flying Spitfires in the Battle of Britain would have been published. You'd be wrong.

This is an exceptionally well written book that gently yet almost instantly transports you to England, 1939. You'll go through RAF flight training, and then be behind a V12 Merlin over Kent in the middle of the Battle of Britain. There are hundreds of such true tales - and I've read most of them - but this is clearly one of the best.

'Boy' Wellum not only takes us inside the cockpit, but inside the emotions of a young man at war, and inside an amazing time and place in world history. If you are a pilot looking for what it was like to fly the Tiger Moth, Harvard, then at 168 hours climb into a Spitfire, this is the book for you. And if you are interested in a literate immersion into The Few, this is the book for you.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. 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).

It was especially poignant to feel the author's loss of hope for his own survival as his tours wore on, and he lost increasing numbers of friends. You truly felt, along with the author, his utter devastation.

At the end of the book, after closing the cover, I burst into tears.

What a great work! Thanks ever so much for your service, Mr. Wellum, and for your retelling of same.

`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!

a fact which makes this memoir extraordinary. Apparently Wellum wrote it many years after the Battle of Britain based upon notes he had taken at the time.

As pointed out in at least one other review, the author spends a lot of time talking about his flight training and relatively little about his combat experiences, which is unfortunate because his descriptions of air combat are riveting. Perhaps the thing to do is to scan the first 100+ pages until you reach the chapters describing actual fighting.

I was loaned this book by a friend who served in the Royal Navy during WWII, and there was a note in it from one of his friends who had served in the RAF. These men are justifiably proud of the role they played in standing alone against the German juggernaut in the early days of the War.

For an excellent book on the strategic aspects of the Battle of Britain, consider With Wings Like Eagles: A History of the Battle of Britain.

I picked up this book on my departure from Gatwick about a year ago and only just got around to reading it. As I was reading I wondered why it took me so long as I found it hard to put down. The author's experiences during the Battle of Britain are gripping and put the reader right in the cockpit.

His first hand accounts of battle in a Spitfire are first class.

In addition to this book I also recommend the novel "Piece of Cake" by Derek Robinson for anyone interested in this period.

An interesting book. Not the best written that I've seen, but its quirky first person narrative does capture the feel for the place and period very well. There were a few historical and technical errors in the book, but these are to be expected in memoirs of this type. I was able to ignore them and move on easily enough. The writer's affection for the aircraft, a Spitfire Mark V, showed through in his lovely prose. I do wish he had gone into a bit more detail about the Battle of Britain in general, and given a more complete outline of his own service. I felt like I was being racheted forward through the war, one episode every six weeks. In spite of my complaints, a good story from one of the many people who still deserve our gratitude and respect. I'd say buy it.

Bookwriters use their fantasy and imagination to tell a tale.

Geoffrey Wellum has written from his younger years, from his own experience,what kind of world he faced.A story so incredible that our mind almost refuse to believe it's true. There's one way of capturing a reader, and that is HONESTY. Mr.Wellum is dead honest.I'm reading the book for the tenths time, stil laughing at some situations and very, very sad at others.A book very hard to put down.I guess most of the persons who want to read this book is aviations "freaks", but this book is a good read whoever you are.I've been so fortunate to have met, one of my heroes,mr Geoffrey Wellum, and talked to him.A fantastic person that I hope to meet again.

If you are really interested in a factual and very well written account of just what was involved in going from a High School student to student pilot to an operational pilot in a Royal Air Force squadron, during the Battle of Britain; all in ten months! This is for you.
There are only three first-class, First Person, aviation books of this era, and this is one of them. Generally, pilots are not good writers, but Geoffrey Wellum is in the Peirre Clostermann class.

I started reading this book tonight and find I can't put it down. Colorful slice-of-life vignettes. Well written and interesting. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes reading about England and World War II.

I very much enjoyed Wellum's account of his involvement in one of the most critical times of our world's near history. His personal and conversational writing style brings a fresh and candid account of his heroic time as one of Britain's most valuable fighter pilots. I also found it unique for the author to bring a personable understanding to himself and others during a time more trying than most of us could ever imagine.

I do recommend this book. A great read!!

This is a terrific book. Very highy recommended. If you have an interest (or even a mild curiousity) about what it felt like to have fought in WWII as a fighter pilot this has got to be the book to read. Be warned that once you start a chapter you will not be able to put it down. While it is obvious that the author survived the war the suspense and drama is high nonetheless. The most amazing thing is that this is all a true story . . .

This book is an exceptionally well written account of the author's progression through RAF flight training and on to the Battle of Britain. If you are a pilot or are interested in aviation, you wont be able to put it down. Additionally, you may just learn some history if you're not careful. This is a book you will likely read more than once.

An amazing read, Have never felt the excitement, pity and fear from one book before. This book makes you feel as though you are inside the most elegant fighter aircraft in the world, whilst sitting in the comfort of your arm chair.

This book certainly does not rate more than two stars. It is repetitive ------ with beers, toast, tea, clouds and dozens of names. The trouble is some sixty years after the experiences Wellum tries to write as a twenty year old rather than tell the whole story other than `Boys own' Except sometimes when he moralizes with hindsight which is dreadful. There is no mention in the book whatever of any German attacks on the airfields he flew from which were well bashed by Goring and his boys prior to the Battle of Britian.
The feel of what went on does not come through with the passion it deserves.