Malta Spitfire: The Diary of a Fighter Pilot

Canadian George Beurling was a phenomenally courageous and expert combat pilot for the RAF during the Second World War. He started out flying missions over Nazi occupied France but wound up in Malta in 1942 at the height of the air siege of that fortress island by Italian and German bombers and fighters. Beurling became a famous air combat ace, shooting down four Nazi aircraft over Western Europe and 27 German and Italian planes demolished, eight damaged, and three more scored as probably destroyed in only 14 days of fighting over Malta. In addition, he won four decorations (including the prestigious Distinguished Service Order, the Distinguished Flying Medal with Bar, and the Distinguished Flying Cross) for bravery and an officer’s commission from Britain in less than two months during the Malta conflict.Beurling in collaboration with Leslie Roberts wrote a book entitled Malta Spitfire: The Diary of an Ace Fighter Pilot about his life and his experiences as a combat pilot and published it in June 1943, when he was in Canada recuperating from war wounds. If you want to learn what it is like to have been in Malta in World War II and fought in raging aerial dogfights overhead, then this is the book for you. It is comparable in tone and descriptive accounts about the details of combat and pilot camaraderie with the book First Light by Geoff Wellum, a similarly excellent book about the Battle of Britain.The story delves into Beurling’s love of flying from the time he was a kid and his obsessive ambition to become the best pilot and ultimately the best combat pilot there ever was. Once you read this book, you may be convinced that indeed he became that. But there is also a very human element that is sometimes overlooked when others discuss Beurling because he was hard to live with and someone who did not suffer inefficient or bureaucratic systems gladly. But that was because he had seen what the Nazis had done to children during the Blitz, and he wanted to avenge that in the most effective way possible. The siege of Malta offered him that chance, and he succeeded valiantly.Beurling explains why Malta was important and why Britain and the Maltese had to fight like hell to defend her even as it was horrific seeing your buddies get shot out of the sky:“You would do a lot of wondering about the why of it, particularly after some sidekick [fellow pilot] you thought a lot of had gone down and hit the deck [crashed]. Why would anybody in his senses want to hang on to a hunk of rock [Malta], so exposed that not even the navy could use it? Why didn’t we just get the hell out of there and let Jerry [the Nazis] have the damned place if he wanted it? Why didn’t we just tell the Malties to keep it and go home? After a while, you knew why, but you didn’t get it at first, and sometimes you were convinced it was all screwy. Then you realized that just so long as the fighter pilots could hang on and keep knocking the Me 109s [Nazi Messerschmitt fighters] and the Macchis [Italian fighters] and the Ju 88s [Nazi bombers] into the sea, we still had a toehold in the Mediterranean and an advance base close to the African coast that the other fellows couldn’t use as a jumping off place. And when you lay back on the hospital pillows, thousands of miles away from Malta, when Montgomery and the Eighth Army came rolling up the coast from Egypt, chasing Rommel and the Afrika Korps back to Tripoli and beyond, you realized at last that not one of those grand guys you’d lived and fought with from Kalfrana Bay to the Sicily coast had spun down in vain. Malta had played a superhuman role in keeping the stage set for the Big Show—and the lads who went west in the Spits [Spitfire aircraft] had done a great part of the job.”The pilot also extends enormous respect to the Maltese people for their resilience and courage:“The Maltese, in other words, could take it—and they did. This was no Singapore. This was one tough island, inhabited by tough people. Not one of them had the slightest idea how long the grub [food] would hold out. No one knew when the Hun might try a landing. Lord knows he’d done his best to soften us up for it! But everybody on the island was hanging on by his teeth and the hell with the Huns and Mussolini. A great show!”This is a highly recommended book for its honest telling of an ace pilot’s account of what it took to defeat the Axis in the Mediterranean during World War II.

If one is interested in facts re 2ndIf you are interested in stories from the war 1939 1945 this must be one of the most incredible stories ever. If you on top are really interested avaition this is the book to read.

If you are into Spitfires and WW2 aviation history get this for sure! It is a good reminder too of the fragile situation the island of Malta found itself in with the German war machine relentlessly pounding them and all the ships trying to relieve them!

First person account of the Spitfire days on Malta. The only problem I have with this book is that there is absolutely no mention of the job the Hurricane pilots did prior to the arrival of the Spits. A good read nonetheless.

Malta must have been an unbelievable arena for young Spitfire pilots during the siege. To have survived the sailing battles is nothing short of a miracle. A good read.

Very good book, very interesting

George "Screwball" Beurling, the "Falcon of Malta", in his own words! A boy who lived just for one thing - to fly - and did everything to become a fighter pilot, and what a fighter pilot he was! I loved reading it!

Highly recommended. An excellent read with some very interesting comments and observations. His truth is far more interesting than the War Hero of the Skies documentary. The lengths he went to, to join up are extraordinary as are the events upon his evacuation from Malta to Gibraltar.

He was no shop egg was George Beurling once he set his mind on achieving something he kept on trying till he succeeded in doing it to an incredible degree of perfection. He wanted to fly so much he crossed the Atlantic as a deckhand four times while German U-Boats were sinking ships by the hundreds. He had it all and maybe that fantastic degree of talent made his service life extremenly difficult as normal rules of flying simply did not apply to George Beurling.Serving in a fighter squadron in England was a waste of his potential and eventually he found his kind of warfare flying against the Luftwaffe and the Regia Aeronautica in Malta where pilots lives were measured in hours and over a period of just 24 days he shot down 27 enemy aircraft he simply cut through the massed enemy formations like a knife through butter leaving a trail of shot down aircraft behind him he was a force of nature.. He would have made a superb test pilot but - he didn't suffer fools gladly he made too many enemies on his own side!

What an amazing tale of dogged determination. George Beurling was going to learn to fly whatever the cost, he had to pay for his lessons out of a meagre income, he even starved to raise the necessary funds.Come the start of the war he travelled to the UK to join the RAF, crossing the Atlantic on a convoy, working on board to pay his way. When the Selection Officer told him he needed his birth certificate to join he went the same route back to Canada to get it. The book describes his journey to Malta and the desperate battle to defend the island, beaten to it's knees but never giving up. All of his battles with German and Italian aircraft (and the dreaded Malta Dog) are described in riveting detail.I can thoroughly recommend this book.

I enjoyed this book because its the first time I've heard his story from the horses mouth. There is a lot of background about how he came to in the RAF from Canada. His wartime exploits were truly remarkable, but he was a loner in the sky, and very hard to control. Johnnie Johnson said that the only way he could tame him was to make him a gunnery instructor because his flair for deflection shooting was exceptional.An interesting and shocking footnote is that he mentions an ex RAF pilot who joined the fledgling Israeli Air Force in 1948, and was responsible for shooting down RAF Spitfires during the struggle for Palestine. I wonder how many more stories like that are waiting to be told.

Written in an almost comic book prose style I found this book tiresome. Beurling was a very talented fighter pilot and saw very intense action over Malta. He had that rare combination of aggression, superb flying ability and good gunnery that meant he accumulated multiple victories in a short space of time. But, there is little in the way of insight into the business of being a fighter pilot to compensate for the awful prose.

George "Screwball" Beurling (a Canadian) was probably one of the best shots in Fighter command. An Individualist who did not always see eye to eye with RAF superiors, he made a name for himself in the defence of Malta with a large score of enemy aircraft shot down. This is his diary - his own words - and a fascinating read, giving his own view of aerial combat and a feel for life in the besieged Island of Malta. It begins with an entertaining account of his learning to fly and complicated attempts to join the air war.Strongly recommended for anyone interested in the WW2 Air war.