The Spitfire Kids: The generation who built, supported and flew Britain's most beloved fighter (2021) By Alasdair Cross
 
A bestselling BBC World Service ten-part series and podcast that celebrates the men and women who built and flew the Second World War's most famous fighter plane - the Spitfire.
 
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
 
'An inspirational read celebrating the incredible young people who gave so much for this iconic British aircraft'. John Nichol, bestselling author of Spitfire: A Very British Love Story.
 
Despite the many films and television programmes over the decades since the end of the Second World War that portray our allied heroes as grown-up men and women, the Battle of Britain was, in the main, actually fought and won by teenagers. The average age of an RAF fighter pilot was just twenty years old. Many of the men and women who designed and built their planes were even younger.
 
Based on the hit BBC World Service podcast Spitfire: The People's Story, we use contemporary diaries and memoirs, many of them previously unpublished, to tell the story of the Spitfire through the voices of the teenagers who risked everything to design, build and fly her.
 
This isn't a story of stiff-upper lips, stoical moustaches and aerial heroics; it's a story of love and loss, a story of young people tested to the very limits of their endurance. Young people who won a battle that turned a war.
 
Hard Cover with Dust Jacket
359 pages
In Fair to Good Condition