They were escaped prisoners-of-war, desperate to risk anything rather than be recaptured. They had even put on enemy uniforms, armed themselves with enemy weapons. There was nothing they would not do to avoid going back into captivity.
At the controls of his trusty Airco DH2 biplane, Lieutenant Andrew Maxwell of the Royal Flying Corps was used to duelling with German pilots high above the trenches. However, after being shot down and taken prisoner by a deranged, sword-wielding enemy officer, Andrew soon wondered which type of duel was more dangerous – in the […]
A stretch of treacherous water to cross, and no boat to do it in… All they had was a few plywood drop tanks jettisoned from aircraft, lengths of bamboo, bits of wood…and their courage. Yes, they needed courage most of all, for entering that stretch of water risked a horrifying death. In the search for […]
Five wounded men walk out of an Army hospital and set off to reach their own units under their own steam. Happens all the time? Not likely, mate – especially when these men were deep inside enemy territory – even on the wrong side of the Mediterranean! So how could they hope to succeed?
The other pilots sneered and joked about it…the day of shame when they called Jim Black yellow. But Jim wasn’t laughing, and neither would any other pilot accused of cowardice and kicked out of the squadron. He’d just have to prove them wrong, even without an aircraft…
A veteran of the battle to defend Malta in 1942, Flight Lieutenant Jim Newman remembered barely surviving against Italian Macchi 200 aircraft. A couple of years later, when promoted to Squadron Leader in the Balkan Air Force – a multinational unit based in Yugoslavia and fighting the Luftwaffe – the Englishman was less than pleased […]
They were trapped in neutral Spain – the pilot of a ditched Hurricane and the first mate of a merchant ship which had also become a casualty of war. They weren’t the best of mates, but they were all that stood between the British fleet at Gibraltar and a lethal strike force. The odds were […]
What makes a good fighter pilot? It’s mostly skill, and Charles Crombie had plenty of that. But it isn’t only skill – you also need to be able to fly through a hail of bullets and flak threatening to hack you out of the sky at any minute. And that was what Charles was afraid […]
Captain Jimmy Ramsey and his maverick Special Raiding Force were used to doing their own thing – dangerous hit-and-run raids deep behind enemy lines. So, during the battle of El Alamein in autumn 1942, when the Raiders were teamed with a Long Range Desert Group unit to capture an isolated German airfield, tensions mounted between […]
In 1939, confident young Pilot Officer Duncan Marlow fell foul of an obnoxious C.O. and was posted out of the way to Griffin Island – a small garrison off Africa’s West Coast. Discipline was lax and the Governor was untrustworthy. He was on friendly terms with the Germans who were stationed nearby, even though War […]
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