Status Updates From Spitfire Ace: My Life as a ...

“He [the ME 109 pilot] probably opened fire a mile away when he still could not be sure of my identity about five seconds before he passed me. … It was a good lesson on the speed at which things happened – out of sight to point blank in thirty seconds, with five seconds to identify friend or foe, then out of sight again in the same time." - p. 157.

"It was estimated that in addition to the dozen or so French aerodromes within seventy miles of the English coast, the Germans constructed a further thirty or more in June and early July [1940]. With three squadrons operating off each aerodrome, this threatened us with well over a thousand aeroplanes." - p. 114.

When the experiments were over [this was in Britain during the Phoney War period of 1939-1940], I wrote a paper on our findings which recommended that we should function in elements of two aeroplanes, not three as was the established practice. The section of three was a legacy of the First World War. I might have saved myself the trouble because nobody took the slightest notice of it." - p. 81.