It was the summer of 1940, and World War II had been raging for nearly a year. Buoyed by his successes on the Continent, Hitler was now planning an invasion of England to seal Europe’s fate.
Though the United States was still a neutral country, a few Americans decided they couldn’t remain on the sidelines. They joined Britain’s Royal Air Force to defend the country—with the future of civilization hanging in the balance.
The Few tells the dramatic and unforgettable story of these Americans who defied their own country’s neutrality laws and risked their very citizenship to fight side-by-side with England’s finest pilots. Flying the lethal and elegant Spitfire, they became “knights of the air” who, with minimal training but plenty of guts, dueled the skilled and fearsome aces of Germany’s Luftwaffe.
By October 1940, they had helped England win the greatest air battle in the history of aviation. Some five years later, at war’s end, just one of them would be alive. Winston Churchill once said famously of all those who fought in the Battle of Britain, “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” These daring Americans were the few among the “few.”
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"There are three groups of Americans who went to World War II long before the U.S. entered the war. First there was a group of Chinese American pilots from Eugene, Oregon who travelled to China and flew against the Japanese. Almost nothing has been written about these brave Americans. Then there was the American Volunteer Group, the Flying Tigers, whose exploits are almost mythic. Then there were those Americans who, in violation of American neutrality, travelled to England and flew for England against Germany. "The Few" is about some of the pilots in this latter group who, seven in number, flew during the Battle of Britain, in effect the few of the few. Only one of the seven would survive the war. "The Few" follows the exploits of these brave men, where they came, why they fought, how they lived and how they died. It was a time when just a few men could make a big difference and Alex Kershaw did a first rate job of telling thier story. Now if someone would just write a book about those Chinese pilots from Oregon, now that would be something."
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Michael (5 out of 5 stars)