Piloting a Heinkel He 111, Leutnant Jurgen Loden was only as good as his crew: cheerful dorsal gunner and radio operator, Willi Klein; quiet ventral turret gunner, Franz Weiss; boisterous side fuselage gunner, Otto Schwabel, and outspoken navigator and bomb-aimer, Marin Lutz. Jurgen wanted nothing more than to live up to his brother’s reputation as […]
Squadron Leader Connor was a man who couldn’t be trusted. Every time he and his men flew into battle, he pulled some stupid stunt that cost a young pilot’s life. But what could his men do? The top brass would never believe the stories of Connor’s stupidity. So Flying Officer Gavin Roberts took the law […]
R.A.A.F pilots Dave Keating and Roger Smith hated each other to distraction, often putting their petty squabbles before their duty and their crew. But when their Catalina crashes into the jungle of Japanese occupied Papua New Guinea, the survivors radio for help. Two days, they are told. Two days until back-up will arrive. Two days […]
R.A.F. officers, Johnny Lees and Nat Rankin, were both skilled fighter pilots. Put either of them in the cockpit of a Hurricane and they could handle whatever the Luftwaffe threw their way. But in an unarmed fishing boat, with a German fighter homing in with all guns blazing, their chances of survival were drastically reduced! […]
Sergeant Ned Jenkins is one of the R.A.F.’s best Lancaster tail gunners – but no-one wants to fly with him. It seems that wherever Ned goes there’s trouble, yet somehow he always manages to get out without a scratch on him. But in a time when superstition ruled the morale of the fighters, what the […]
From the moment Jack Mitchell joined the R.A.F. and began his flying training as a pilot, he was a marked man. He was pointed out to strangers; his mates used to whisper about him; his every move was watched. And when his pilot’s wings were eventually pinned to his chest, even the R.A.F. expected great […]
Young Sergeant Pilots, Stewart Wright and Tommy Miller, did not think much of their new squadron – and even less of their squadron leader. But, flying their outdated Brewster Buffalo aircraft into battle against efficient Japanese Zero fighters, they discovered just how wrong they were when the chips were down. They had found pride in […]
Take a look at this list: dispatch-rider’s motorcycle, German staff car, Matilda Tank, Panzer Mark IV. It takes a lot of training, plus plenty practice, to become a really top driver of even one of that lot. No man could handle them all like an ace. No man? Wait a minute, you heard of ‘Wheels’ […]
…that’s all Jan Solecik wanted. Trouble was, he’d been thrown off pilot training courses and was now stuck in the Polish Army, fighting alongside British troops in the North African desert. As he looked up at the aircraft which fought in the sky above him, not even he could imagine the strange series of events […]
Sam Blake was fed up. He’d come from Canada to join the R.A.F. to fight Nazis as a fully qualified pilot, only to find he had to learn to fly all over again, the official way. Then they kicked him out of a fighter squadron. “Too reckless and irresponsible,” they said. “Give him a bomber. […]
Enter your postcode below (with a space) and click "Find" to search for your local stockist.
Thank you. You have been successfully subscribed to our newsletter.