In May 1940, over 300,000 British servicemen scanned the skies in dread, clinging to a sliver of hope for rescue from the sands of Dunkirk—or facing annihilation by the shrieking Junkers Ju 87 Stukas in their scorching divebomb runs.

Trapped, with the German Wehrmacht on one side and the treacherous sea on the other, destruction loomed from above. The men’s eyes widened in terror as the Stuka’s banshee scream rang. They hit the deck, bracing for oblivion. Yet, deliverance came from above as a fury unleashed; a squadron of fighters tore through the clouds shielded by the sun, their guns blazing a hailstorm of bullets, intercepting and shredding the Stuka.

The silhouette was iconic: the sleek, elliptical wings, a warplane of unmatched agility, powered by the roaring thunder of the RollsRoyce Merlin engine. The British Spitfire was not about to abandon the men cornered at Dunkirk.

Hermann Göring, the commander of the Luftwaffe, had promised Adolf Hitler the complete destruction of the British Expeditionary Force before any rescue could materialize. However, the heroic Spitfire pilots, steering the apex of aerial combat engineering at the time, strongly disagreed…