Last of the Few: The Battle of Britain in the Words of the Pilots Who Won It (Unabridged)
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
The last words from the Battle of Britain pilots who saved the Allies from a Nazi victory.
After the fall of France in May 1940, the British Expeditionary Force was miraculously evacuated from Dunkirk. Britain now stood alone to face Hitler’s inevitable invasion attempt. For the German army to land across the channel, Hitler needed mastery of the skies - the Royal Air Force would have to be broken. So every day throughout the summer, German bombers pounded the RAF air bases in the southern counties.
Greatly outnumbered by the Luftwaffe, the pilots of RAF Fighter Command scrambled as many as five times a day, and civilians watched skies crisscrossed with the contrails from the constant dogfights between Spitfires and Me-109s. Britain’s very freedom depended on the outcome of that summer’s battle: Its air defenses were badly battered and nearly broken, but against all odds, 'The Few', as they came to be known, bought Britain’s freedom - many with their lives.
More than a fifth of the British and Allied pilots died during the Battle of Britain. These are the personal accounts of the pilots who fought and survived that battle. Their stories are as riveting, as vivid, and as poignant as they were 70 years ago. We will not see their like again.
Customer Reviews
Good book, horrible reading!
I am very interested in World War 2, and in the Battle of Britain in particular. After being somewhat put-off by the preview of the book, I decided the content outweighed the bad reading demonstrated in the preview. After having listened to the entire book I have found it's contents to be very interesting, if not entirely new. I have heard portions of several of the interviews before, but most were new to me, or in their complete form where they had been abbreviated elsewhere. As good as the book was, however, the reading was bad. I found Eric Brooks reading to be painful at best. His reading was both uncomfortable in rhythm, over-pronounced and it seemed at times as if he was changing commas into periods. His accent was also a distraction as I was never able to tell if it was someone with a cockney accent trying hard to hide it and failing badly, or if the accent was entirely a put-on and also done badly. I know on several occasions he pronounced words incorrectly that I would have expected a true "Brit" to know. The other narrator was very pleasant to listen to, but it was rather funny to have Jocelyn Millard (a male squadron leader of the RAF) voiced by a female! All in all, I still enjoyed the audiobook despite these problems. If you can survive the preview without gnashing your teeth and you'd like to hear the personal accounts of this incredibly important period of history, then I would recommend it.