piece of cake

Piece of Cake is a six part 1988 television series, depicting the life of a Royal Air Force fighter squadron from the day of the British entry into World War II through to one of the toughest days in the Battle of Britain (7 September 1940). The series was produced by Holmes Associates for London Weekend Television.




The series is based on the 1983 novel of the same name, by Derek Robinson. In the book, the squadron is equipped with Hurricanes. The relative rarity of airworthy Hurricanes in the late 1980s precluded their use in the television series.



The squadron depicted was the fictional Hornet Squadron, which was equipped with Supermarine Spitfire fighters, and deployed to France, where it waited out the Phoney War in comfort and elegance, until the German attack on Western Europe in May 1940. One by one, nearly all of the original pilots were killed and as losses mounted, the character of the squadron changed from a casual nonchalance to a fight for survival. By the end of the series, only four of the original fourteen officers had survived.