Squadron Leader Geoffrey Harris Augustus Wellum DFC (4 August 1921 – 18 July 2018)[1][2] was a British fighter pilot and author, best known for his participation in the Battle of Britain.

[6] Bushell was shot down and captured almost immediately after Wellum's arrival, and was later executed by the Gestapo in the aftermath of the "Great Escape".

[4] Much later, in an unpublished interview with The Times, Wellum recalled: "After I joined the squadron they went to Dunkirk and by the end of that day we'd lost five people, four of whom I'd met the night before in the officers' mess.

Although just 18, he was not the youngest pilot to fight in the battle, an honour which is currently held by Martyn Aurel King, born 15 October 1921 - [7]) despite being nicknamed "Boy" by his colleagues.

[9] In the summer of 1941 Wellum participated in more than 50 "sweeps" over occupied France (also known as Circus offensives) flying escort for Blenheim and Stirling bomber formations, taking the war to the enemy.

He claimed a Bf 109 shot down on 9 July 1941 over France,[9] and in August 1941, Wellum was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.

[3][10] By this time most of Wellum's original colleagues at 92 squadron had been killed or captured; he survived owing to a combination of luck and skill.

By now, the Luftwaffe was flying a new fighter aircraft, the Focke-Wulf Fw 190, superior in all but turn radius to the Spitfire V, and the squadron took heavy losses.

[11] In July 1942, Wellum was sent to Glasgow, where he participated in Operation Pedestal, a convoy mission to carry supplies for the relief of the besieged garrison at Malta.

Wellum led a flight of eight Spitfires to be carried on aircraft carrier HMS Furious, sailing from the Clyde to the Mediterranean, and then land them on the island.

[3] On 11 August 1942, Wellum led his flight of eight Spitfires, flying without ammunition to save weight (the .303 cartridges were replaced with cigarettes), and landed at Luqa airfield on Malta, joining 145 Squadron on air defence duties.

Wellum witnessed the arrival at Valletta Harbour of the few remaining ships, including, last of all, the desperately-needed oil tanker SS Ohio, barely afloat, escorted by two destroyers.

He served first as a staff officer in the Second Tactical Air Force in West Germany, where he flew jet aircraft such as the Gloster Meteor, the de Havilland Vampire and the English Electric Canberra.

In the mid-1980s, with the family business in liquidation and his divorce pending,[15] Wellum retired, as he had promised himself in his youth, to The Lizard peninsula, Cornwall,[15] settling in Mullion.

[3] To prove to himself that he had actually done something with his life,[15] Wellum took his wartime notebooks and wrote a longhand memoir of his time as a Spitfire pilot, that he never intended for publication.

[16] Approached in 2000 by author James Holland who was researching a novel set during the Battle of Britain, Wellum lent him his unpublished memoir (see "First Light", below), Holland showed it to friends in publishing at Penguin Books and, in 2002, Eleo Gordon, Penguin's editorial director, approached Wellum with a publishing deal[6][15] – two decades after he had originally written the memoir.

[19] To mark the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, the BBC commissioned a one-off drama for TV called First Light, based on Wellum's book of the same name.

[20] Wellum also appeared in the documentary "Greatest Events of World War II in colour," being interviewed on his experience at the Battle of Britain.