The Silver Spitfire

The Legendary WWII RAF Fighter Pilot in His Own Words

By: Tom Neil

Narrated by: Roger Davis

A brilliantly vivid Second World War memoir by one of 'the Few' Spitfire fighter pilots.

Following the D-Day landings, Battle of Britain hero Tom Neil was assigned as an RAF liaison to an American fighter squadron.

As the Allies pushed east, Neil commandeered an abandoned Spitfire as his own personal aeroplane. Erasing any evidence of its provenance and stripping it down to bare metal, it became the RAF's only silver Spitfire.

Alongside his US comrades, he took the silver Spitfire into battle until, with the war's end, he was forced to make a difficult decision. Faced with too many questions about the mysterious rogue fighter, he contemplated increasingly desperate measures to offload it, including bailing out mid-Channel.

He eventually left the Spitfire at Worthy Down, never to be seen again.

The Silver Spitfire is the firsthand, gripping story of Neil's heroic experience as an RAF fighter pilot and his reminiscences with his very own personal Spitfire.

©2019 Wg Cdr Tom Neil (P)2019 Orion Publishing Group

Rambling

I really wanted to love this book. These stories are always so riveting. Well this one leaves a little to be desired. It's nothing against the author, who passed away in 2018, and must have penned this book in 2013. So that means he must have been rather advanced in age. So with that, this book wanders around and about and the reader isn't completely sure where each chapter is going. In fact, there's as much non-war related musings as anything to do with his extraordinary RAF career. Some have absolutely nothing to do with a memoir at all, but just general thoughts. Tom Neil was and is a legend. So this is nothing to take away from his career or accomplishments. Also, Roger Davis is spectacular. He's one of the best in the business, and he elevates as he does everything he narrates.

Good Story, But Little Action

This is a thoroughly enjoyable memoir of one part of pilot Tom Neil's long life; specifically, when he was appointed as an RAF liaison officer to the U.S. Ninth Air Force's 100th Fighter Wing. Most of the story focuses on Neil's non-combat experiences and adventures with Americans, who Neil finds alternatively admirable, amusing, and sometimes a little disgusting. Despite a few close calls (not from combat), most of Neil's experiences in this part of his life seem to have been enjoyable.

The Silver Spitfire doesn't make an appearance until relatively late in the book, and it is an interesting story, but it really is not the focus of the book. Neil did not go into combat in that plane. Neil's combat experience--which was very extensive--all predated this book.

If you know what the book covers, and adjust your expectations accordingly, I think you will enjoy it.

The narration ranges from really good--when the narrator is speaking for Neil--to jarringly bad--when the narrator (eminently British) tries to imitate an American accent. Many of Neil's American friends were from the South, and Neil often notes that they spoke in a very southern accent. For this narrator, EVERY American accent comes out as a fairly bad imitation of a Brooklyn accent. To say that he cannot do a southern accent is an understatement. Pretty irritating to this American listener.

Then again, I imagine American narrators regularly butcher British accents to the British ear!

A fantastic tale

This book is well written and covers things that most wartime novels do not. The author conveys well some of the mundane parts of being a pilot, and the story of the Silver Spitfire is amazing, almost unbelievable, but verifiably true.

Why did I waste my time?

Have you ever been cornered at Thanksgiving by your 91 year old great grandfather who rambled on and on and on about his experiences in WORLD WAR II as a British FIGHTER PILOT flying a SPITFIRE and 6 hours later he never mentions ONE dogfight or even firing his machine guns even though he was a squadron leader and flew in the Battle of Britain but all he talks about is flying around in an abandoned Spitfire and drunkenly crashing his car (twice) and how he met all of these various officers who (very important to note) wore their caps rakishly and flew several different types of aircraft but you couldn’t care less, but you don’t want to be rude so you let him ramble on until he slowly drifts off into an afternoon nap (finally!) and you let out a huge sigh of relief that this ordeal is over and you can get back to your life?
Yeah, it is exactly like that.