The Youngest Spitfire Pilot

The late Geoffrey Wellum was the youngest Spitfire pilot to fly in the Battle of Britain.

On the 18th July 2018, Geoffrey Wellum passed away aged 96. At just 18, Wellum joined the Royal Air Force and fought in the defense of the United Kingdom during the uncertain days of 1940. As this generation quietly slips away, it's up to us to tell their stories.

Geoffrey Wellum (pictured right) and Brian Kingcome (pictured left).

It was 92 Squadron that Wellum joined back in the early days of the conflict. This was part of 11 group, the department of the RAF that defended the South East coast of England. Due to its proximity to German-occupied France (which was just 20 miles away), Wellum's squadron was involved in some of the most intense aerial combat.

In total, Wellum flew between 50 and 60 missions over the Battle of Britain. The most terrifying of these missions, said Wellum, were the ones involving dogfights.

"If you were in one-on-one combat and you could see the man behind you trying to shoot you down, you knew the meaning of the word fear. In fact, I found myself on one occasion fairly calmly saying to myself, ‘I’m going to die’.”

Dogfight contrails across the skies of England.

Often, the Luftwaffe came over the English channel in huge formations of bombers and fighters. Wellum once described how he felt when he saw this mass of enemy aircraft coming towards his fighter squadron.

“The controller vectored us to 150-plus enemy aircraft that looked like a whole lot of gnats on a sunny evening in the distance. I remember being a bit daunted by this and I thought, where do you start on this lot, so I did the obvious thing and went straight in underneath them, had a quick fire and got out of it. Mainly you didn’t have time to be frightened – you were busy flying for your life, really.”

Heinkel 111s over the English Channel

On the front line, the men of the RAF fighter squadrons lived a taxing existence. With several sorties every day, the pilots would land, refuel, rearm and wait for the next call to action. At any moment a bell would ring and they would have to run to their aircraft to fight again. As a young man not long out of school, Wellum had to adapt to this life and death reality in a matter of weeks.

London on fire.

The average age of an RAF pilot in 1940 was 20.

It wasn't just the British who defended the United Kingdom during the Battle of Britain, around 470 pilots of nationalities also volunteered to fly RAF fighters, including Americans. Around 141 pilots were Polish and 87 Czech. During the Battle, 2,600 German pilots and aircrew lost their lives, many of whom were also young men.