Spitfire Attack (Fortunes of War)

‘Bill’ Rolls as a young Sergeant-Pilot couldn’t believe his luck when he was posted to a fighter squadron in early 1940. Not only a fighter squadron but one equipped with the Spitfire – an aircraft he had seen and dreamed of flying but had never even sat in before now.

In those early ‘Phoney War’ months squadrons based in England had very little to do and so Bill Rolls was given the benefit of putting in quite a few ‘conversion’ hours in his new aircraft. Little was it known that a new phase of the war was to begin and all ‘home’ based fighter squadrons would soon be involved in the life-and-death struggle of defending their homeland during what became known as the ‘Battle of Britain’.

This period, for a pilot, was to be etched forever on many of the young men that had been thrown into the deep end and viewed the survival of one day as a bonus. Bill went on to score a number of victories, during the Battle of Britain, and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal (DFM). Subsequently commissioned he was also awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC).

Bill Rolls writes with gusto and experience of those ‘bleak’ days when fighter pilots never seemed to be out of their cockpits.