The Royal Air Force turned 100 on
1st April this year, and carries its age in great fashion. It was the first air
service to become independent of the other two, and was born out of the
hard-won experience built up over the battlefields of the Great War by the
Royal Flying Corps and Royal Naval Air Service. The achievements of those two
corps and of the air force that emerged from their unification are certainly
worthy of celebration, and Penguin is doing so by publishing a collection of
books that tell some of the countless great stories of the RAF.
The Centenary Collection is a series
of six paperback books, united by same style of cover and by the same agile
format, which bring together a good selection of tales of that human courage
that has seen the RAF through the great challenges of its century.
Naturally, the skies of the Second World
War get most of the attention, but of the many stories out there, Penguin has
selected an interesting few:
The Last Enemy by Richard Hillary is not only the story
of a Spitfire pilot in the terrible hours of the Battle of Britain, but also
the extraordinary tale of a man who was shot down and survived through months
in the hospital, becoming a member of the “Guinea Pig Club” that Archibald
McIndoe created by pioneering plastic surgery.
Every so often, Richard writes the
name of a comrade, of a friend, noting “from that flight, he did not return”.
It hits home hard, every time. Not much else needs to be added.
There is no attempt on Richard’s
part to reconstruct how he was shot down: just falling into darkness and pain,
with hands and face burned, eyesight lost. Weeks of suffering, followed by the
return of eyesight and a long struggle to get back in control of his hands and
have his face rebuilt. It is a tale of courage and also a story of evolving
medical practice. The strength of character that emerges from the pages is hard
to describe: Richard is direct, sincere and concise in his memories: the
intensity comes from what he sees and goes through, there is no need for
tinsels.
Richard decided to write his story,
and that of his lost comrades, when he was in the hospital, slowly recovering.
He said he wrote for humanity whole, to let at least some of the stories of
those men be known, to show what they were ready to do for their ideals.
Richard Hillary was not tamed by
what he went through. He helped rescue a mother and her children from a bombed
house, and that ensured that he would never rest. He managed to get back to a
flying unit.
The Last Enemy
was first published in 1941. It is an open ended book, because Richard died 7
months later in a second crash.
Few stories could better underline
the value of the men who made the RAF what it is.
Tumult in the Clouds by James Goodson is another inspired
choice. Anglo-American, James survived the sinking of the SS Athenia off the
Hebrides and distinguished himself by helping other survivors. He decided to
become a fighter pilot in the RAF and served in 43 Squadron and for a stint in
416 Squadron, Canadian, before being posted to fly Spitfires with 133 Squadron,
one of three Eagle Squadrons set up for American volunteers.
Eventually, those Squadrons would
become the core of Fourth Fighter Group, Eight Air Force when the United States
declared war, and the Spitfires were hesitantly handed over to be replaced by
P-47s. Including this particular story is a tribute to the long lasting and key
relationship between the UK and the US, between the RAF and what wasn’t yet, at
the time, the USAF, but the USAAF, with the extra A for “Army”. It is amusing
to read of how an impudent Texan joyously asked King George VI permission to
wear Texan boots with the RAF uniform, and touching that the original Eagle
squadrons asked to continue wearing RAF wings on their uniforms after becoming
USAAF units.
The book is rich of action, and
recalls combat actions and rivalry with the great Luftwaffe units, and even the
meetings with the Me-262, the first combat jet. One of the best stories to
experience what it was like to fly fighters in the Second World War, and a
great story of long range bomber escort flights and daring strafing through
hellish barrages of Flak.
Going Solo by Roald Dahl brings us to Africa, where
Roald is caught by the war. He trains in Nairobi, on Tiger Moths, then out to
the huge base at Habbaniya, before joining 80 Squadron with its Gloster
Gladiators. But Roald crashes in the desert and has to go through a slow and painful
recovery in Alexandria, before ferrying a Hurricane out to Greece and staying
there to fight alongside the remaining few, and they were really few at that
point, trying to carry through a doomed campaign.
The book is full of photos that
appear on many of the pages, and original letters sent at the time are also
reproduced inside. It is another deserving story: the battles over Greece are
not the most famous, so it is great to include them in this collection.
First Light by Geoffrey Wellum contains one of the
most impressive recollections of training to become a fighter pilot. The pages
transmit all the burning desire and all the fears and hesitations. The night
flying, with its challenges. The difficulties in mastering navigation. The
entry, with very little in terms of flying hours, in newly formed 92 Squadron.
There is everything, and Geoffrey really transmits his emotions from the page.
His account of his first flight in a Spitfire is particularly delightful.
The pages that follow are intense: the
Battle of Britain, then fighter sweeps and escort missions over occupied
France. All of them gripping, and culminating with Geoffrey taking part in
Operation Pedestal, the desperate bid to resupply Malta.
Tornado Down by John Nicol and John Peters brings us to the RAF of our times. RAF Flight
lieutenants John Peters and John Nichol were captured in the desert of Iraq in
1991 when their Tornado was hit by Saddam’s air defences. They were prisoners
for seven terrible weeks of torture, abuse and interrogations.
The narration alternates between one
protagonist and the other, telling the story of those days in vivid detail. The
book contains multiple good photos and a cutaway of the Tornado, and gives us
the chance to discover what it was like to go through that infernal experience
and return to normality after it, which is a formidable feat in itself.
Immediate Response by Mark Hammond is the last book of the
collection but, I will admit, the first one I began reading. Its great merit is
to bring Kandahar and Bastion to life on the page and tell the story of
operations that are very close in time, yet already distant. The key turning
point in the Afghan campaign was in 2006 and the book shoves the reader into a
Chinook flying in support of British troops holed up in the infamous platoon
houses.
Major Mark Hammond is a Royal
Marine, a bootneck with experience on Lynx and on USMC Cobra attack helicopters
that refused to “fly a desk” and went on to serve in the Chinook force. In his
story there is the joinery of modern day operations, and the intricacy of
dealing with rules of engagement, political implications, media considerations
that are a cornerstone of modern operations.
The most vibrant pages of the book
are about a casualty extraction from an incandescent landing zone in Musa Qala,
which required a major combined effort to be carried out and which resulted in
the award of the Distinguished Flying Cross. This personal, direct,
bootneck-speak story – truly hoofing,
if you know what I mean – gives an insight of what Afghanistan was truly like,
and shows the hard work of the MERT teams as well.
I want to include this extract from
the book, which introduces another powerful part of the book, when Chinooks are
instrumental to the first large scale Relief in Place between PARAs and Royal
Marines, because it shows the complexity of modern operations and the variety
of considerations involved.
Immediate Response Extract - Chapter 27 by Liger30 on Scribd
The book is rich with images from
the campaign and is opened by a cutaway of the Chinook.
Immediate Reaction is certainly recommended reading for everyone who wants to better
understand operations in Afghanistan. A multitude of good books have been
published, and I haven’t read them all so any list I can offer you wouldn’t be
complete, but I can certainly recommend Ed Macy’s Apache and Hellfire for
the Attack Helicopter side; Aviation
Assault Battle Group – The 2009 Afghanistan tour of the Black Watch (3rd
Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland) might be less known, and is a
chronicle more than a novel, but is highly recommended. Rich of photos, maps,
data contributed by multiple members of the battle group, this is a great
summary of one of the most interesting roles covered by British troops in
Helmand, written directly by those who were there. I also suggest picking up Company Commander by Major Russell Lewis
and Joint Force Harrier by commander Ade Orchard with James Barrington. For me,
Immediate Response was another step
in a travel that began with those books and which is by no means finished.
The Centenary Collection is a
perfect way to celebrate the RAF’s birthday in this special occasion. The
stories that have been chosen show in full the kind of human values and of
characters that have made the RAF what it is today. It sheds light to lesser
known battles; it shows modern day joint force approaches and shows how the
special relationship with the US truly went in force.
It is a collection of tales that I
think anyone with an interest in the RAF’s story should possess. I’m certainly
glad to add them to my own collection, right by my many aircraft models,
because Spitfires and Hurricanes and Typhoons will make a good contour for
these books.
These days I often stand accused of
being a navy type, while my interest is the health of the UK’s military
capabilities as a whole. Those that accuse me of an anti-RAF bias clearly do
not know me, and misinterpret my comments. They can’t know, and some might not
believe even if told, that it was the Spitfire that started my interest in the
military. They can’t imagine that I was reading The Great Circus, the memories of Pierre Henri Clostermann, when I
was just a boy; nor that the Dambusters Raid and the “thousand bombers” attacks were arguments of my readings and studies at an age when
they probably should not have been. I grew up with pilots such as Guy Gibson as
an ideal hero and with a great interest in the Pathfinders and in the agile,
fast “wooden wonder” Mosquito which managed to improve the picture for Bomber
Command while it was paying such a bloody price to get past German defences. The
friends who have lived up with me ranting on about the RAF’s exploits could
definitely shoot down any accusation of me having anything other than love for
the Light Blue.
That doesn’t mean that I always have
to agree with its decisions and their impacts on wider Defence, but that’s a
story for another time.
The Centenary Collection is an ideal
addition to my vast library, and a source of new inspiration. While I’m
writing, though, let me also again recommend that you get your hands on The Great Circus (or The Big Show, in other editions) as
well, if you get a chance to do so. Clostermann, Free French ace in the RAF,
first on Spitfire and then on his beloved Tempest nicknamed “Grand Charles”, has
another great story to tell.
It might have also been responsible, at least in part, for my special, (not) secret love for the Hawker Tempest and Fury...
