An Ace in the Air

Michael Korda’s new book, With Wings Like Eagles, speaks of a time when a precious few prevailed over all odds, deprived Hitler of victory, and saved the world. It is the story of the epic Battle of Britain, in which Air Vice Marshall Keith Park, a New Zealander from Thames, led three thousand members of the Royal Air Force against Hitler and foiled his decisive attempt at ultimate conquest. Their miraculous victory, so famously described by Winston Churchill as a time when “never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few,” is elucidated by Korda in the greatest detail. Describing the intensity of battle in “the long, delirious burning blue” of the sky above Southern England — perhaps for the first time — Korda has traced the entire complex web of political, diplomatic, scientific, industrial, and human decisions during the 1930s that led inexorably to the world’s first, greatest, and most decisive air battle.