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How many inexperienced fighter pilots were thrown into combat during the Battle of Britain with very little time on type? Incomprehensible as it seemed at the time, England would ultimately be saved by those same pilots of RAF's Fighter Command. Some of them even flew that most legendary of aircraft, the Supermarine Spitfire. Could today's generation handle such pressures?

That was the question that inspired "Spitfire Ace: Flying the Battle of Britain," an interesting miniseries on BBC Channel 4 that has been since shown in the U.S. The accompanying book by Martin Davidson and James Taylor does a good job in explaining that young men of today could indeed cope with the demands of learning to fly an aircraft such as the Spitfire with as little as 10 hours of intense instruction.

Four young present-day volunteers are put through their paces in a Tiger Moth (the plane used for preliminary training by Battle of Britain pilots). The two strongest pilots then have the wonderful opportunity, courtesy of pilot/owner Carolyn Grace, to fly a real Spitfire. Our 21st Century Spitfire class is then narrowed down to just one pilot who goes on a nine-hour advanced operational training course.