Spitfire And Hurricane Pilot Memoirs of Battle of Britain - Empty Skies Video

Youtube has accumulated a number of Spitfire pilot memoirs. While adding one such to Geoffrey Wellum's page on this site, I came across this video, which is a good pilot's summary and recollection of flying the Spitfire and Hurricane in combat, in the Battle of Britain. If a new pilot could survive the first two months mastering the aircraft and learning to shoot, as one pilot states, they had a better chance overall of surviving.

The Spitfire was a nimble plane to fly that pilots "strapped on" but it did have it's limitations with visibility on take off and also in combat. As such the Spitfire pilots talk about trying to get as close as possible to an adversary before shooting. The video is here, EMPTY SKIES, featuring interviews with both Hurricane and Spitfire pilots as filmed some years ago. It is an excellent video, as it's the actual pilots voices (in their senior years), giving you the facts and insightful details in their own words.

These are the survivors, but as Geoffrey Wellum states, being remembered is about remembering all of them, those that fought and survived, and those who fought and did not -- freedom won thanks to all of them.