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Spitfire pilot Geoff Wellum described the racing sensations of air combat:

All at once, crossfire, heavy and pretty close at that. Bloody front gunner. My target, concentrate, the target. Looking at him through the sight, getting larger much too quickly, concentrate, hold him steady, that’s it, hold it … be still my heart, be still. Sight on, still on, steady … fire NOW! I press the gun button and all hell is let loose; my guns make a noise like tearing calico … I get the fleet impression of hits and explosions of the glass nose of my Dornier and of Brian’s Spitfire breaking away, its oil-streaked belly visible for a fraction of a second. Keep firing, Geoff, hold it. For Christ’s sake break off or you’ll hit him; too close, this. I stop firing, stick hard over. I even hear his engines as he flashes by inches overhead. Bloody hell, this is dangerous!

In mêlées in the sky, it was often remarkable how few aircraft either side destroyed. Over a Channel convoy on 25 July, for instance, scores of British and German planes exchanged fire, but only two Spitfires were shot down, and one Messerschmitt Bf109. RAF pilots had received scarcely any training in air fighting, an art the Germans mastered over Spain and Poland, and the defenders were now obliged to learn by experience. Early in the battle, it became apparent that the overwhelming majority of ‘kills’ were achieved by a handful of each side’s best men: the top 3.5 per cent of Fighter Command’s pilots made 30 per cent of all claims for aircraft shot down, and the Luftwaffe’s aces accounted for an even higher proportion of ‘kills’. Exceptional eyesight, marksmanship and nerve to get close were the decisive factors.

The RAF strongly discouraged the cult of the ‘ace’, and of personal scores, but the Luftwaffe energetically promoted it. Such stars as Adolf Galland, Helmut Wick and Werner Molders were said by resentful comrades to suffer from ‘Halsweh’ – the ‘sore throat’ on which they were eager to hang the coveted ribbon of a Knight’s Cross – as all three did when their score of ‘kills’ mounted. Galland, a supremely effective air fighter but also a selfish and brutal one, had no patience with weaklings in his command. One day on the radio net a frightened German voice wailed, ‘Spitfire on my tail!’ and then again a few moments later, ‘Spitfire still behind me! What should I do?’ Galland snarled, ‘Aussteigen, Sie Bettnasser!’ – ‘Bail out, you bed-wetter!’

Air combat, unlike any other form of warfare, engaged exclusively very young men, who alone had the reflexes for duels at closing speeds up to 600mph; by thirty, they were past it. Commanders, confined to headquarters, issued orders. But outcomes hinged upon the prowess of pilots just in or just out of their teens. Almost everything they said and did in the air and on the ground reflected their extreme youth; on 17 August Lieutenant Hans-Otto Lessing, a Bf109 pilot, wrote exultantly to his parents, describing his unit’s hundredth alleged ‘victory’ like a schoolboy reporting the success of his football team: ‘We are in the Geschwader of Major Molders, the most successful … During the last few days the British have been getting weaker, though individuals continue to fight well … The Hurricanes are tired old “puffers” … I am having the time of my life. I would not swap places with a king. Peacetime is going to be very boring after this!’ One of the despised ‘puffers’ killed him the following afternoon.

The RAF’s Paddy Barthrop said afterwards: ‘It was just beer, women and Spitfires, a bunch of little John Waynes running about the place. When you were nineteen, you couldn’t give a monkey’s.’ British pilots partied relentlessly at night, youth overcoming exhaustion. Pete Brothers said, ‘We used to booze dreadfully.’ One day when his squadron was stood down in bad weather, the airmen adjourned to the bar, only to find themselves scrambled when the sky cleared. ‘I shall never forget taking off and thinking, “That button … turn it that way … switch on gunsights …” We were all absolutely tanked. Mind you, when we saw black