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They cherished their aircraft as magic carpets into the sky. Bob Stanford-Tuck said: ‘Some men fall in love with yachts or some women, strangely enough, or motor cars, but I think every Spitfire pilot fell in love with it as soon as he sat in that nice tight cosy office with everything to hand.’ Similarly, Bob Doe on his first sight of his new plane: ‘Our hearts leapt! We walked round it, sat in it, and stroked it. It was so beautiful I think we all fell a bit in love with it.’ Fighter Command’s British pilots fought alongside contingents of New Zealanders, Canadians, Czechs, South Africans and a handful of Americans. The 146 Poles who participated in the Battle of Britain formed the largest foreign element, 5 per cent of overall RAF pilot strength. Their combat reputation was superb, rooted in experience and reckless courage. ‘When you seen [sic] the swastika or black cross on the aircraft,’ said one of them, Bolesław Drobiski, ‘your heart beat much quicker, and you decided that you must get him or you get shot yourself. It’s a feeling of absolute … vengeance.’ This was not bombast. When Poles later attacked Germany, they chalked messages on their bombs – ‘This is for Warsaw’, ‘This is for Lwów’ – and meant it.

Popular adulation was heaped on the aerial defenders of Britain, expressed everywhere airmen met civilians – as they often did, in evenings after fighting in the sky above towns and villages. The applause of ordinary people meant much to the pilots amid their exhaustion and losses. ‘There was tremendous kindness,’ said one young man afterwards. ‘It was a lovely feeling. I’ve never felt that Britain was like that again.’ Soldiers muttered jealously about the RAF’s ‘Brylcreem boys’; the Wehrmacht had a similar phrase of its own for the Luftwaffe – ‘Schlipssoldaten’, ‘neck-tie soldiers’. For the rest of the war, fliers of all nations retained a glamour denied those who fought on the ground.

Fighter Command was acutely sensitive to the loss of its experienced pilots: ten Hurricane aces – men who had shot down five or more enemy planes – were lost between 8 and 19 August, then a further twelve between 20 August and 6 September. Novice replacements were killed at more than five times this rate; casualties were especially high in squadrons that continued to use the rigid formations RAF official doctrine prescribed for ‘Fighting Area Attacks’. Units fared better whose commanding officers promoted flexibility and initiative. Pilots who flew steady courses died; those who stayed alive dodged and weaved constantly, to render themselves elusive targets. Three-quarters of downed British fighters fell to Bf109s, rather than to bomber gunners or twin-engined Bf110s. Surprise was all: four out of five victims never saw their attackers; many were hit from behind, while themselves attacking a plane ahead.

‘People who stayed in a burning cockpit for ten seconds were overcome by the flames and heat,’ said Sgt. Jack Perkin. ‘Nine seconds and you ended up in Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead in Dr Archie McIndoe’s burns surgery for the rest of the war. If you got out in eight seconds you never flew again, but you went back about twelve times for plastic surgery.’ Hurricane pilot Billy Drake described the experience of being shot down: ‘It was rather like having a motor-car accident. You can’t remember what the hell happened.’ Both sides suffered heavily from non-combat mishaps, born of momentary carelessness or recklessness by tired and often inexperienced young men: between 10 July and 31 October, 463 Hurricanes suffered such damage, sometimes total and fatal. As many as one-third of both Dowding’s and Goering’s overall losses were accidental.

Few pilots who bailed out offshore were recovered: a man in a dinghy looked pathetically small to rescue-launch crews scouring the Channel and North Sea. Ulrich Steinhilper gazed below as he flew back over the Channel from a September mission: ‘Our track across those wild waters became dotted with parachutes, pilots floating in their lifejackets,