Defending London In A Spitfire | WW2: I Was There 

Though the fighter pilots rather hero worshipped the bomber pilots. They couldn't believe the cold bravery of flying a slower big target, full of bombs to blow up, for half the flight... The stoic bravery of lining up to fly steady speed and height, as you approach the target, is hellish. Then to stay on that line to take your photograph, before FINALLY trying to protect yourself...

This reminds me of a story about a young English boy who saw American soldiers for the first time arriving in England during WW2. He said to his father that he wanted to be an American soldier when he's older. Once of age he became a U.S citizen. Fought in the Vietnam war. Then sadly died in 9/11

yes but so do all pilots deserve our respect. hurricanes shot down more planes, and the poles were magnificent. i heard.

@@SkinwoIf You are perhaps referring to Rick Rescorla from Cornwall, England who became director of security for the financial services firm Morgan Stanley at the World Trade Center. A remarkable man and a hero indeed! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Rescorla

​​@@covidcol3505correct on all three points and more. Other nations' pilots also contributed but the Hurri bagged a vastly bigger tally than the Spit even though the Spit is the iconic Battle of Britain or WWII British fighter

On reading this comment, tears have run down my cheeks.

hear hear 🙃

Oh I dont know,, I'm sure that come the next conflict all the immigrant Blokes (who accept all the myriad Benefits) but dont share our Culture, our Standards . our believes, or religion etc etc will be queueing up to defend their Adopted Country from Foreign Invaders, with their last breath. Tho I'm not holding my Breath

Cheer up. We have plenty of fight left

Fighting internal enemies. Commie politicians.

And the Womens Auxilary group who ferried new and repaired aircraft back to the airfields.

Agree. He doesn’t speak about his victories at all. God bless you, sir!

Now these woke leftist imbeciles all seem to hate their countries…

My dad was in the RAF as a mechanic with the reconnaissance unit out of North Africa. He refused to talk about his experiences as he had signed the official secrets act and believed that meant he took his testimony to his grave. He never ate rice after the war and always said it was because of the war. As a mechanic and carpenter he patched up many planes and saw many terrible injuries. He just kept it inside suffering with PTSD the rest of his life. He died in 2000. Still protecting the King, Queen and country with his war secrets. An amazing man, humble and proud.

@@kathleenjansen2402 My dad was much the same - so many of that generation were like that. From our perspective now, in 2023 its easy to incline to the view that they had a naive belief in the integrity of the country's leadership and that they never questioned things - but that's far too simplistic and I suspect that until or unless we have a deeply predatory military force bearing down on the UK every day we are not equipped to understand them properly. Nonetheless we can admire their deep integrity and sympathise with their PTSD struggles for which they got little, if any, help. Even the civilian population had such issues to deal with. I can well remember the look on my mother's face when she told us about her memories of being a teenager being straffed by machine gun fire from a Stukka driver bomber in a North London High street - not just once either. She said that as the plane passed very low overhead she briefly saw the pilot and realised he was not much older than her and the thought went through her mind "You're just like me - why do you want to kill me?" Yeah, the problems we face these days are hard to compare to what that generation went through. Thanks for sharing your story.

sooo handsome! my goodness!

What’s the name of his book?

Hi, it’s called Born to Survive.

@@Postpunk-cx1ph thank you!

@b577960 They were living special circumstances then. If the modern generation had to go through similar circumstances, maybe it would surprise us. Who said that ''extraordinary circumstances turn ordinary men and women into extraordinary people.'' ?

Men like your uncle saved us!