Author: Alan Clark Publisher: Pen and Sword ISBN: 1783031875 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 511
Book Description
This book gives readers a direct link to crash sites that can be visited, with accurate grid references, site description and current photographs. It covers some 450 selected sites with emphasis given to those on open access land. The areas covered are: Southern England: Dartmoor and Exmoor 20 entries * Wales 120 entries * Isle of Man 20 entries Peak District 75 entries * Yorkshire Moors: Eastern 20 entries * Lake District 25 entriesPennines: East Lancashire & West Yorkshire * Scotland: Central and Southern 30 entriesScotland: Highlands & Islands * Ireland 20 entries Each area includes a preamble describing the local geography and historical notes. Individual site entries include exact location, details of the aircraft and crew and the circumstances of the loss.
Author: Tony Holmes Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN: 1780967012 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 215
Book Description
A compact guide to 70 of the most iconic aircraft to have shaped warfare over the last 100 years. Aviation has revolutionised warfare over the last 100 years, and this new pocket guide gives the reader the essential details of 70 iconic aircraft, including the Sopwith Camel, the Spitfire, the Messerschmitt Bf 109, the P-51 Mustang and the F-4 Phantom. Drawing on Osprey's comprehensive aviation archive, Plane Spotter's Guide uses detailed profile artwork to illustrate and aid recognition, as well as specification boxes to provide all the technical details.
Author: Steve Darlow Publisher: Grub Street Publishing ISBN: 190811780X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 240
Book Description
A personal wartime human history of five RAF airmen who fought Fighter Command’s air battles during World War II. Five distinguished RAF airmen, four pilots and one radar operator/navigator, who fought air battles during the Battle of Britain and the Blitz, have recounted their experiences in detail to author Steve Darlow. Their stories have never before been published, and they talk engagingly of their service life, combats, losses, injuries, friendships and fears—flying Spitfires, Hurricanes, Blenheims, Beaufighters and Havocs. One pilot tells of the time he fell victim to the enemy, knowing he was going down with his plane. A Beaufighter radar operator remembers being involved in shooting down a German aircraft—“He took a vertical dive, struck the ground and exploded with a shower of incendiaries. I felt like a child with a new toy. I had at last proved myself but for some reason I suddenly felt a little sad.” These men would also distinguish themselves in subsequent air campaigns—night defense of the UK, offensive operations over the continent and support to D-Day and beyond. In between the aerial combats and ground attack operations, promotions, decorations and command responsibilities would come their way. But not all would make it through safely to the end of the war. One would end up behind barbed wire. Collectively Five of the Few is a war story of youth maturing, through aspiration and idealism, courage and bravado, fear and heroism, memory and reflection. It is a reminder of why so much was owed, and still is, by so many to so few.
Author: Eric P. Donald Publisher: Xlibris Corporation ISBN: 1483620999 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 529
Book Description
I came across an old photo recently and pondered the people in it. The person in the centre was my late brother, Norman G. Donald of the RAF. The other figures in the photo I do not know, though I suspect they were his flight instructors at North Battleford, Canada. The photo bears my brothers script KING-PINS ALL!N. BATTLEFORD. After qualifying as a pilot, he sailed back to England and was posted to RAF Hunsdon just north of London in 1942. He was soon flying Douglas Havocs and Bristol Beaufighters. Night fighters were a new school of defence, but it was hopeless finding enemy aircraft in the dark. The Turbinlite device was fitted to the Beaufighters and Havocs, and the idea was to find the enemy somehow, guided by ground control using heavy ground radar units (too heavy to carry in aircraft), turn on the Turbinlite searchlight, and illuminate the enemy aircraft. A single-engined Hurricane fighter flying alongside then shot down the enemy aircraft. It did help to see the target as this same sky was full of thousands of Allied aircraft, all trying to avoid each other.
Author: Peter Francis Kenny Publisher: Xlibris Corporation ISBN: 1503505847 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 1230
Book Description
Although Australia is only a young country in comparison to other nations, it can hold its head up high and proudly proclaim that it is one of the giants in this world of toil and trouble in which we live. When the odds are stacked against Australians, they dont turn and run; instead, they stand and fight and overcome the obstacles that face them. The contents of this volume are a tribute to all the men and women of this proud and great country, who have come from all walks of life to give of their time, and unfortunately, some have even given their lives, to defend this great land and keep it free. There have been politicians, doctors, nurses, police officers, average everyday citizens, musicians, actors, artists, farmers, graziers, authors, sportsmen and women, journalists, and a host of others who have taken up the cause for their country and the monarchy, serving from the Crimean to the war in Vietnam and beyond. Their heroic deeds and their many sacrifices have ensured that todays generation can rest easier, proud in the knowledge that these servicemen and women have paved the way for our freedom. Now they come together once again as one big family to shed an insight on their achievements so that you can fully understand and appreciate what they have and had experienced. I dedicate this work to the memory of all those who have made the supreme sacrifice in order that we may live in peace and prosperity and also to the families of those who did not return. The book is not a glorification of war but a glorification of the individual and his or her actions and deeds.
Author: Zbyšek Ne?as-Pemberton Publisher: Air World ISBN: 1526789604 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 271
Book Description
Zbyšek Ne?as was just 18, and still a high school student, when he escaped from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia a month before the outbreak of war in 1939. He managed to make his way to Britain where he had a cousin. Ne?as enlisted in the RAF in 1940, initially being posted as an interpreter at the Czech Depot. Some of his early duties involved the interrogation of captured German aircrew. He was, however, determined to fly. That wish came not as a pilot, but as a radar operator. In time, Ne?as was posted to 68 Squadron, which throughout the war had a large number of Czech exiles on its strength – one flight was entirely Czech-manned. In this moving memoir, he details just what it was like to serve as part of an RAF night fighter crew during the second half of the Second World War. From the organization of squadron and operations, to the directing of night fighters in the bomber stream, problems of maintaining contact with the target, the duration of patrols to interception tactics, all, and more, is revealed in this book. Having trained on the Blenheim Mk.IV, Ne?as’ operational patrols began on Bristol Beaufighters, the squadron subsequently converting to de Havilland Mosquitoes. There are of course, the graphic accounts of victory in the air. This includes combat with a Heinkel He 177 Grief over North Sea, or the explosion of a Dornier Do 217 after another successful interception. As well as nighttime intruder operations over Europe, from the summer of 1944, 68 Squadron, Ne?as included, found itself drawn into the battle against Hitler’s V-weapons, particularly the V1. Ne?as’ crew ended the war with three confirmed kills, one probable, and two damaged. After the war, Ne?as returned to his homeland where he received the tragic news that that none of his immediate family had survived the German occupation This is Zbyšek Ne?as’ story of his part in the defense of Britain’s skies and the final victory against the Third Reich.
Author: Mark Barber Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN: 1780968981 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 135
Book Description
The recent 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, combined with the threat of significant cuts to the current RAF, have highlighted the importance of Fighter Command in the early days of World War II once more. The role of the “few”, as described by Churchill, during the Battle of Britain has been the subject of much mythologizing both at the time and in the years since. This title will put Fighter Command in context; describing the lack of funding and attention which it received during the interwar period, until it was almost too late. The myth of the fighter pilot will be humanized, with first-hand accounts quoted which put nervous but brave human beings from all walks of life in the cockpit. Although the Battle of Britain may not have in itself been the decisive encounter that it has historically been portrayed as, the moral victory won by the RAF, the victory that proved that Germany could be defeated, was just as important as a military-strategic victory.
Author: Graham Waterton Publisher: Air World ISBN: 1399080210 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 290
Book Description
Having left his grammar school just before his 16th birthday, Brian Slade falsified his age to pursue his dream of becoming a pilot. Within a few days of his 17th birthday, he was awarded his ‘wings’. It was the start of this teenager’s remarkable wartime career. Soon after being awarded his pilot’s brevet, Brian was posted to his first squadron. Flying the venerable Vickers Wellington, he found himself experimenting with early target marking techniques. It was also there that Brian gained the nickname ‘The Boy Slade’. Though Brian’s journey through the wartime RAF mirrored the experiences of tens of thousands of young men, what was different, if not unique, was the fact before he had turned 18, which was the minimum age to begin aircrew training, Brian had already completed thirty-four operations – more than was needed for a tour. This tally included the three 1,000 bomber raids against Cologne, Essen and Bremen. He was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross for nursing his badly damaged Wellington, which sustained flak and night-fighter damage, home after a raid on Bremen. Undaunted, Brian soon after volunteered for his second tour of operations. It was at this stage that he joined the Lancaster-equipped 83 Squadron in the newly formed 8 Group, becoming an experienced Pathfinder skipper. It was a role in which he marked targets in the Battle of the Ruhr, the bombing of Hamburg (Operation Gomorrah) and the Peenemünde raid. The RAF’s Youngest Bomber Pilot of WW2, told by his nephew, a former officer in the British Army, details all of Brian’s fifty-nine missions, and captures his compelling progress with Bomber Command, alongside the technological advances in aircraft, pathfinder strategy and tactics. Sadly, Brian’s Lancaster was shot down over Berlin in August 1943. The details of its loss remained shrouded in mystery until the puzzle of his aircraft’s demise was eventually solved by tracing the family of the only survivor. The relent-less dangers, not just in operations but also in training, and the continuous loss of life, are drawn into sharp focus. But, on account of his age, Brian’s story is unique. There may have never been, nor will ever be, an RAF pilot of 19 years old with his flying and operational experience. Complemented with a collection of previously unpublished photographs, The RAF’s Youngest Bomber Pilot of WW2 is one of the Second World War’s most amazing tales.
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Author: Alan Clark
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Author: Steve Darlow
Author: Eric P. Donald
Author: Peter Francis Kenny
Author: Zbyšek Ne?as-Pemberton
Author: Mark Barber
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Author: Graham Waterton