Seventy years ago, on May 20, 1948, we lost one of our great aces of the Second World War when Flying Officer George Beurling was killed in an airplane crash in Rome, Italy. He was the stuff of legend: at home in the sky as he never seemed to be on Earth, he was a shatteringly successful fighter pilot who chafed at the constraints of his own fame.
On the island of Malta in the endless, hot and dusty summer of 1942, fighter pilots from the British Commonwealth fought and died to prevent the Nazis from bombing the Maltese into submission, and to break a crippling siege blockade. After the Battle of Britain, there was no greater battle of the Second World War in which air combat and superiority played the central role. There, in the brilliant, searing sky over Malta, reputations were made, lives were forfeited, stresses were multitude, and legends were born.
Canadian fighter pilots played a crucial and outsized role in the defence of an island that hovered on the brink of collapse for two and a half years. Among the great aces who wrote their stories there, many were Canadian and none more storied than Flight Sergeant George Frederick Beurling.
Of all the Canadians who engaged in the grim business of killing German airmen, Beurling was the most accomplished. There would be no one better at war's end. Beurling was then and is today a figure that inspires conflicting impressions, opinions and feelings – both suspicion and adoration.
In his eyes you can see, no, feel the…
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