• Complete account of elite French aviation group, GCI/5, credited with over 100 “kills”

This book tells the story of the two squadrons 1/5 and 2/5, which made up the Groupe de Chasse 1/5 during the Campaign for France. A large part has been devoted to the accounts of the pilots and mechanics, and what they lived through together.

The Groupe was credited with one hundred and eleven probable and confirmed kills by the Armee de l’Air which used a different tally system from both the Royal Air Force and the Luftwaffe, often closer to what really happened.

Engaged in September 1939, the GC 1/5 regularly confronted the German Air Force; because of where it was located, its missions, the relative quality of its machines but also its strength, the precision and the rigour of its officers, the discipline and the expertise of its pilots and mechanics, it was the French unit which shot down so many enemy aircraft.

Moreover, of the twenty-six best French tallies obtained between 1939 and 1940, fifteen belonged to pilots from the GC 1/5, each scoring more than 6 confirmed kills.