First Light

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The story begins as the dark clouds gather over Europe in the late thirties. Wellum joins the R.A.F. and is selected for fighter pilot training. The whole account is awesome stuff. From gypsy moth novice to that very first night flight and into the seat of a Spit.

First Light: Original Edition (Audio Download): Geoffrey First Light: Original Edition (Audio Download): Geoffrey

The whole thing feels unreal and I can’t believe this is really happening. I must be getting lightheaded! What a pity, in a way, that an aeroplane that can impart such a glorious feeling of sheer joy and beauty has got to be used to fight somebody.” Meantime, our real Spit took off with the pilot delivering Boy Wellum's point of view (by way of a specially designed camera mounting on his flying helmet).

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An intimate account . . . rich in detail' James Holland, Wall Street Journal, 'Five Best World War II Memoirs' After the war, Wellum remained in the RAF until 1961. Among his appointments he was with the Second Tactical Air Force in Germany, converted to jets – flying Gloster Meteors, de Havilland Vampires and English Electric Canberra bombers on reconnaissance sorties – served at RAF Gaydon, and finally, in East Anglia, with a Thor intermediate-range ballistic missile unit. Soon after Dunkirk, 92 Squadron was transferred from RAF Duxford in Cambridgeshire to RAF Pembrey in Carmarthenshire, Wales. It was there that Wellum began his combat career, "chasing isolated German aircraft all over the south-west". [3]

First Light: The True Story of the Boy Who Became a Man in

He retired from the RAF in 1961 to take up a position with a firm of commodity brokers in the City of London until his retirement to Cornwall where he still lived when ‘First Light’ was published in 2002. In 1943 he married Grace Neil and they had three children. After Wellum left the RAF the family settled in Epping, Essex. He worked for a family haulage business and, after that went under, spent time working as a commodity broker in the City. The couple divorced in 1975, and six years later he relocated to Mullion on the Lizard peninsula in Cornwall. He joined the local choir, and eventually became deputy harbourmaster. A daughter, Deborah, died last year. He is survived by two children, Anna and Neil. No other account of flying in the Battle of Britain has been articulated as well as Geoffrey's in First Light Gillian Crawley, Daily Express August 1941 - Flying Officer Geoffrey Harry Augustus Wellum (42925) of No. 92 Squadron RAF is awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) in recognition of gallantry displayed in flying operations against the enemy: Geoffrey Wellum, who has died aged 96, was the author of one of the most gripping personal accounts of aerial warfare ever written. First Light (2002), which was made into a BBC drama in 2010, was drawn from notes he had made as a teenage flier in the Battle of Britain.He was then posted directly in May 1940 to 92 Squadron, flying Spitfires. He saw extensive action during the Battle of Britain. His first Commanding Officer was Roger Bushell, (later immortalised in 'The Great Escape'), and his close colleagues included Brian Kingcome. An extraordinarily deeply moving and astonishingly evocative story. Reading it, you feel you are in the Spitfire with him, at 20,000ft, chased by a German Heinkel, with your ammunition gone Independent On Malta, Wellum was diagnosed with severe sinusitis and battle fatigue, after three years of intensive frontline flying. After surgery, he returned from Malta to Britain via Gibraltar, and later became a test pilot for new aircraft, such as the new Hawker Typhoon fighter-bomber, based at Gloster Aircraft. [3] 1943 [ edit ] This tells the vivid and at times moving portrait of a Spitfires pilots journey through, not just the Second World War, but also young adulthood and the fears and emotions felt by someone young who was involved in the conflict.