The Few
The American "Knights of the Air" Who Risked Everything to Fight in the Battle of Britain
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3.9 • 38 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
From the author of national bestsellers The Bedford Boys and The Longest Winter comes "a rousing tale of little-known heroes" (Booklist).
The Few tells the dramatic and unforgettable story of eight young Americans who joined Britain's Royal Air Force, defying their country's neutrality laws and risking their U.S. citizenship to fight side-by-side with England's finest pilots in the summer of 1940-over a year before America entered the war. Flying the lethal and elegant Spitfire, they became "knights of the air" and with minimal training but plenty of guts, they dueled the skilled and fearsome pilots of Germany's Luftwaffe. By October 1940, they had helped England win the greatest air battle in the history of aviation. Winston Churchill once said of all those who fought in the Battle of Britain, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." These daring Americans were the few among the "few." Now, with the narrative drive and human drama that made The Bedford Boys and The Longest Winter national bestsellers, Alex Kershaw tells their story for the first time.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With his customary narrative drive, Kershaw (The Bedford Boys: One American Town's Ultimate D-Day Sacrifice) spotlights the handful of American pilots who joined the Royal Air Force and its fighter squadrons during the Battle of Britain. They have been overshadowed by or confused with the better-known Eagle Squadrons, which formed in the autumn of 1940 with the tacit consent of the U.S. government. Kershaw's "few" were a vanguard, enlisting individually to operate the British Spitfire planes as early as May 1940, when England stood alone and her odds of survival seemed long. Crusaders and adventurers, the pilots ignored U.S. neutrality acts to fight from a mixture of principled opposition to Nazism, vaguely defined Anglophilia and sheer love of air combat at a time when it still seemed glamorous. Scattered by ones and twos among different squadrons, each had his own story, which Kershaw admirably contextualizes within the climate of the Battle of Britain. Using personal vignettes to convey the extraordinary routines of life in the cockpits, in the squadrons and in England, Kershaw evokes the heroism of these pilots, only one of whom survived the war whose tide they helped turn.
Customer Reviews
Fair synopsis on Battle of Britain but too much emphasis on Nazi achievements of Kills
Growing tired of glorifying the villains - it is one thing to share both sides of the war but to celebrate the kills in battle goes too far. Interesting that there wasn’t this same “balance” in referring to the Japanese. The heroes in wwii were the men who fought for freedom not the nazis who made 100+ kills.
Cover art off
I’ve liked some books by Alex Kershaw but based on the cover there’s some serious anachronisms. The plane looks like an fw-190 from the front -which didn’t appear until late 41 early 1942ish in the western theater.