Walter Bennett still had nightmares of the day when his Anson, all set to attack a surfaced U-boat, had almost collided with a Catalina flown by an overanxious Yank who had also come in for the kill. Walter had dodged the Yank – and flown straight into a hail of fire from the German guns […]
It came out of nowhere, a glint of moonlight reflected in the dark night sky. The Luftwaffe pilot’s eyes frantically searched for his attacker in the murk of the evening, but it was invisible… a phantom. Then it streaked across the clouds like a bat out of Hades, its guns blazing at the Messerschmitt 109. […]
Officially they were called Forward Air Controllers, but air pirates was nearer the mark. What else would you call pilots who sneaked about all over the Vietnamese jungle tops, ambushing the enemy from the air then withdrawing before they had time to retaliate? Roy Armour was one of these men. He flew with a secret […]
The Blitzkreig had thundered through France leaving carnage in its wake. For many men, the British Expeditionary Force’s retreat ended long before the beaches at Dunkirk. But one thing was certain: Lieutenant Jack Dodd was going to get his men home. Even as they huddled, stranded in a coastal village, with no hope of the […]
High over the Channel coasts of England and France, American and British pilots diced with death every day as they took on Hitler’s Luftwaffe. But then, as well as the losses they all saw with their own eyes, other Allied planes began to be mysteriously shot down and a terrible thought occurred to the Allied […]
Haruki Murakami, of the Imperial Navy Air Service, and Josh Croydon, of the Royal New Zealand Air force, duelled in the bright blue skies above the Pacific Ocean. The war was nearing its end, but Haruki’s Mitsubishi Zero Type 0 model 52 and Josh’s Vought F4U Corsair fought on like clashing eagles – until a […]
The Luftwaffe ground crews standing around the German drome gazed upwards in amazement. There, above them, a Royal Air Force Mosquito was circling, undercarriage and flaps down, preparing to make a landing. It looked like a crafty trick of some kind – but no! The Mosquito touched down and rolled to a standstill. The pilot […]
The story of a grubby RAF mechanic who threw away his spanner and stole a Buffalo – to become a fighter ace! Story: Staff Art: Mira Cover: Ian Kennedy
Pilot Officer Bob Barnes was bored. He’d joined the RAF hoping to be a fighter pilot, always in the thick of things. Yet, here he was, a navigator in a Catalina, searching the seemingly endless oceans for U-boats which they never seemed to find. There was none of the action he’d craved, this was more […]
The other airmen in Pilot Officer Bob Tanner’s squadron reckoned Bob should have joined the Navy. Sometimes he flew his Beaufort so low over the North Sea that his crew thought they were in a submarine! But that same crew would follow Bob anywhere and obey his every order, even when it meant fighting beside […]
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