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 […]
The huge stone statue of Buddha smiled… Beside it on this remote Burmese hillside lay the smoking wreckage of a Japanese transport plane, with an injured general inside, and a complete set of plans for their invasion of India. From every point of the compass Japanese search parties came to hunt for the wreck. And […]
When his P47 Thunderbolt was shot down over Sicily, Major Mike Dante of the USAAF was caught by some passing Italian infantrymen. However, when Italy surrendered to Allied forces soon after, this particular unit were having none of it. They decided to wage their own guerrilla war against a vicious German panzer grenadier squad who […]
TWO old tanks – two knocked-out Italian tanks whose guns still worked, and were trained on the prison camp fence – these and some vicious strands of barbed wire were what stood between a crowd of desperate British prisoners and freedom. Captain Al Kelly and Lieutenant Pete Smith reckoned there was a fighting chance of […]
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 […]
Purple with rage, the Luftwaffe squadron leader shook his fist at the lone Typhoon disappearing over the horizon. All around him, shattered planes and burning hangars covered his blitzed airfield, victims of one pilot. And on the airfield in Belgium a British squadron leader scanned the horizon for the same plane. He was furious too. […]
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 […]
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 […]
He led his squadron into the thick of the fiercest dogfights – and yet he always came back without a scratch. He took fantastic risks, for he seemed to bear a charmed life. They called him “Lucky” Lane, but even his own men came to hate and fear the young Squadron Leader, because they knew […]
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