SPITFIRE INTO BATTLE

Foreword

My father was part of a remarkable generation, a generation whose challenge was to save their country from a tyranny which threatened every aspect of the way they lived. Understated, uninterested in politics and distrustful of politicians, they rose to the challenge. As my father recalls in this book, they had grown to believe that war was inevitable not because of any jingoistic impulse but because the strutting jackboots and displays of military might offended their sense of decency and fair play.

My father was a calm man, uneasy with self - aggrandisement, and he only wrote the book under pressure from his family. Having committed himself to doing so, he determined that it should do more than just record his own exploits. In it he writes movingly of the deeper feelings stirred by the death of friends and of the loneliness of command. He was a brave man, but also a realist. A friend and contemporary of his once remarked to me that he was a man without fear. When I told my father this, he laughed and said that a man without fear was a very dangerous man. He had learned to live with his fear and to control it - he swore to himself that he would never give in to it and let down those who relied on him.

( ... ) This is the story about a unique partnership of a man and his aircraft. It is also the story of a brave man from a brave generation. I am enormously proud of my father, and I hope others who read this book will understand why.

The Rt. Hon. Iain Duncan Smith MP

As a true R.A.F. and Commonwealth air forces enthusiast, I have had the chance, the honour and the privilege to meet the late Lieutenant General Aviator ( retd ) Baron Michel " Mike " Donnet D.F.C. ( 1917 - 2013 ) on several occasions ( three interviews, remembrance ceremonies, funerals ). During the first ( February 3rd, 2009 ) and the third ( September 12th, 2011 ) interviews, " Mike " ( although he has always been " Mister Donnet " to me ) told me about Wilfrid G.G. Duncan Smith, who was the Commanding Officer ( C.O. ) of No. 64 Squadron ( March - August 1942 ). He used to describe him as a remarkable man. In the R.A.F. ( and perhaps in the Army and the Navy as well ), the term " Yellow " was used to refer to the fear. When I mentioned this very term and its meaning, " Mike " told me that Duncan Smith had decided that the " Yellow " Section would not be called in this way. The pilots who would have formed the very Section were not a bunch of tossers, so he had decided that it would be called the " Charlie " Section instead.

Mehdi Schneyders.