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 […]
Sergeant Owain Howell was too headstrong for the R.A.F. Charged with insubordination, he found himself consigned to the ground crew, servicing the planes he had once hoped to fly. Travelling with his crew to Africa, he was shot down and stranded in Italy. Squadron leader Leonard Brinkley, on the other hand, was a cool and […]
Squadron Leader Marko Vida was a talented and fiercely fascist pilot. Backed by the Nazis, Vida and his Black Sun Squadron dominated the skies over Croatia… …Or so they thought. A Partisan Air Force made up of old, stolen fighters and led by Flight Officer Zlatan Pavic and Flying Officer Petar Milic would not hand […]
Tactics had changed, machines had improved, but Group Captain Roland Bird knew from his Great War experiences that efficiency came with practice and attention to detail. His new command could expect a hard taskmaster, especially the crew of Wellington S-Sugar, who had crashed his car at their first meeting.
Shooting up unsuspecting British trucks in a captured Hurricane was just one of the dirty tricks played by Erich von Werner — a pilot hated by his own men as much as by the British. The feeling was mutual, particularly for Luftwaffe pilot Carl Lutz and Ted Bull of the R.A.F. — two men linked […]
As a tail gunner on an Avro Lancaster bomber, Sergeant Lex Duffield was used to danger in the sky. However, more even danger soon appeared in the unlikely form of a fellow Lanc rear gunner — the reckless and short-tempered Sergeant Tommy Deakin — and inevitably they clashed. Fate soon intervened and they faced a […]
Flak, machine-guns, searchlights, enemy fighters — these the Nazi pilots knew and could handle. These things were dangerous, all right — but they didn’t turn a man’s blood to ice water in his veins, they didn’t paralyse his hands on the controls in utter, freezing terror… But the new weapon used by the R.A.F. night-fighters […]
It was a daring tactic known as the “Taran” — using an aircraft as an aerial battering ram. Major Ilya Bezkhov of the Russian Air Force had used it on several occasions and lived to tell the tale. When the Royal Air Force took on a mission to deliver four Tomahawk fighter-bombers to the Russians, […]
When war came to the island of Silau, south east of New Guinea, the pilots of a Royal Australian Air Force squadron laughed at two freakish-looking planes already operating there. “Pop” Onslow and his son, Willie, ran an air-freight business which used an ancient Vickers Virginia bomber and an odd little crate called a “Flying […]
During the war most people served in the same unit all the time. However, Jack Banham was different. He was in an Italian jail, then a front-line trench with the Greek army, then the observer’s cockpit of an Italian biplane. At one time he was even a colonel in the Greek army… …Or was it […]
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