The Spitfire Kids

by Alasdair Cross

Despite the many films, TV programmes and books that have told the story of the Spitfire’s role in World War II, most people are unaware that the Battle of Britain was, in the main, fought and won by teenagers. The average age of an RAF fighter pilot was 20 and many of the men and women who designed and built these iconic planes were even younger.

In The Spitfire Kids, author Alasdair Cross tells the stories of those who risked their lives to design, build and fly her – from those working in aircraft building facilities regularly targeted by the Luftwaffe, to the pilots who took to the skies to defend a defiant Britain in the summer of 1940.

The individual stories include plenty of quotes from letters, interviews, newspaper reports and other sources. There are three sections: builders, designers and fliers, each of which has its own appeal, and all of which help us to understand, more than eighty years later, the debt that we owe these men and women. • Published by Headline www.headline.co.uk (hardback £20, ebook £20, audiobook £19.99), ISBN 9781472281968 RB