On Combat

Alex Kershaw’s The Few: The American “Knights of the Air” Who Risked Everything to Save Britain in the Summer of 1940 is an exciting biographical narrative about three American flyers who left the United States in 1940 to fly against Hitler’s Germany.

The heroic profiles penned by Kershaw paint a vivid picture of the joys of flying a high-performance fighter, the dangers inherent to aviation (two of the three protagonists are killed in non-combatant activities), and the violence of air combat over southern England in the summer of 1940 (the third was killed in battle over France a year after the Battle of Britain as a highly experiecnced combat flier).

Motivation: These three Americans were lured by the love of flying and the the yearning for adventure to slip out of their country and seek combat against the Germans. Altruism and ideology seem to be absent among these men who covertly left their homeland, violated American neutrality laws, and swore allegiance to king George the VI to seek battle. They experience the thrills of the hunt in the air, but the excitement is offset by the ever-present nerve-snapping danger and the grinding fatigue. Excellence in the air is not enough for even the most expert flyers on both sides as highly-experienced combat pilots are lost in crashes or combat over time. Only one of the six Americans who flew for the king in the Battle of Britain survived the war.

Recognition: Small vignettes of German antagonists are welcome offsets to the account of the Americans. Kershaw points out the German fighter pilot’s yearning for fame and decorations (described as “throat ache”–where high decorations are worn) through high kill scores. Curiously the RAF pilots victory tallies are seldom mentioned, nor do they appear in the narrative as motivators. By basing recognition on killing the enemy, the Germans seemingly created a powerful combat incentive, reinforcing Martin Van Creveld’s argument that the Germans created powerful organizational forces to generate combat motivation in Fighting Power. Specifically, honor and recognition went to the most proficient warriors. Incentive system or not, Kershaw’s narrative suggests RAF fighter command was just as eager for battle. The praise and admiration that all of Britain heaped on her fighter pilots during the summer of 1940 (characterized by Churchill’s words: “Never in the field of conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few”) is certain to have been a powerful motivator

Churchill welcomed the American fliers as a political lever, hoping to bring America into the war as the Empire stood alone. America’s reaction to these pilots who slipped out of the country (against American neutrality laws) to fight is largely left unstated, as is FDR’s reaction to these pilots who put him in a difficult political situation. The Few is an exciting read, paints an up close look at the violence and danger of WWII air combat; questions unanswered leaves the reader wishing for more.