RAF North Weald
Author : Dave Eade
Publisher :
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 49,66 MB
Release : 2010
Category : Airplanes, Military
ISBN : 9780946958559
The American Eagle Squadrons of the Royal Air Force
Author : Timothy S. Good
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 233 pages
File Size : 30,65 MB
Release : 2020-04-16
Category : History
ISBN : 1476679541
Book Description
While the United States sought to remain neutral in the early years of World War II, some Americans did not. This book is the first to provide the operational records and combat reports of the three American "Eagle" Royal Air Force squadrons--units comprised of volunteer American pilots who served with the British prior to the U.S. entering the war. The records tell the story of the more than 200 pilots who, against federal law, flew with the British in their fight against Nazi Germany. While some Americans served individually in other RAF units, these three squadrons--the 71st, 121st and 133rd--were the only ones organized exclusively for Americans. They were the first of dozens of American fighter squadrons that would soar over Europe.
RAF Southend
Author : Peter C. Brown
Publisher : The History Press
Page : 363 pages
File Size : 39,9 MB
Release : 2012-06-01
Category : History
ISBN : 0752477013
Book Description
RAF Southend focuses on the airport's role in the Second World War, between October 1940 and August 1944, from when it became a fighter station in its own right, until it became an armament practice camp later in the war. It describes the manning and maintenance of the forward fighter station, often under attack, and follows the varying fortunes of the staff and personnel who were posted there, and the highs and lows of the events, occasionally tragic, that occurred on and around the aerodrome. It also gives in-depth details of the numerous defensive and offensive operations carried out by the various RAF fighter squadrons during their time based at Southend. Through interviews with ex-staff and eyewitnesses, and the meticulous cross-referencing of original material, this book makes will make a fascinating read for anyone with an interest in local, aviation or military history. Author Peter Brown is an established local historian, with many years of research in the Southend area.
Flyer
Author : Andrew White
Publisher : Fighting High Publishing
Page : 223 pages
File Size : 11,25 MB
Release : 2024-07-31
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1838068767
Book Description
Donald Osborne Finlay, a sporting name familiar to households in the 1930s, was Britain’s greatest athlete of the time; a hurdler whose triumphant exploits graced the sports pages and newsreels week after week. From a humble family background, he became a double Olympic medalist, European Champion, and Empire (Commonwealth) Champion; he also won the AAA 120 yards hurdles an unprecedented seven times in succession. Reporters ran out of superlatives to describe him. At the three Olympic Games in which he ran, he captained the British team twice, including the Berlin Games of 1936 in front of Adolf Hitler. An all-round sportsman, both track and field events came naturally to him as did football. He played for the country’s top amateur sides and turned out for Tottenham Hotspur in wartime matches. All the more remarkable is that Finlay competed at the very highest levels of international athletics at the same time as pursuing his demanding career as a Royal Air Force fighter pilot. Joining up as a boy apprentice in the mid-1920s, he qualified as a pilot before the start of the Second World War and found himself in the cockpit of a Supermarine Spitfire, commanding a squadron, during the Battle of Britain. Shot down and wounded in the Battle, he was soon back in the air and rose through the ranks to command a fighter wing in Burma, ending the war with several ‘kills’ to his name, as well as a Distinguished Flying Cross and an Air Force Cross to add to the medals won under less lethal circumstances on the running track. As a commander, his insistence on strict discipline often led to conflict with his subordinates, but there is no doubt that his methods got results. After the war, still serving in the RAF, Don returned to competitive athletics and was as fast and successful, if not more so, than ever. By then he was in his 40s, but age was no barrier and several of his greatest hurdling victories came when others would have been long retired from the track, against athletes often twenty years his junior. Don Finlay’s life was to end prematurely, and under tragic circumstances, but his legacy lives on as one of the finest athletes ever to wear the vest of Great Britain, as well as one of ‘The Few’.
The Millionaires' Squadron
Author : Tom Moulson
Publisher : Pen and Sword
Page : 367 pages
File Size : 38,76 MB
Release : 2014-07-08
Category : History
ISBN : 1473838479
Book Description
Imagined by an aristocrat in White's Club, London in 1925, a part-time squadron of wealthy young men with their own private aircraft was incorporated into a newly-established combat-ready Auxiliary Air Force, first as bombers, then fighters. The pre-war years combined serious training with frivolity and mischief, but the outbreak of war in 1939 changed that. Despite their social rank the pilots were thrust into the heart of the action, with mortality proving to be the great social leveler. From privileged pre-war lifestyles to front line deployment the lives of those who survived underwent radical change. Through the battles of Britain, Malta, the African desert and Italy the squadron's composition was transformed, and by war's end only a minority were British and none were millionaires. Britain had changed too, and the re-formed squadron filled with a combination of veterans and young middle-class ex-service pilots. The pilots flew Hurricanes in the Battle of Britain, and Spitfires thereafter until the arrival of jets in the '50s; DH Vampires and Gloster Meteors. The one aircraft they could not master was the little-loved mid-engine P-39 Bell Airacobra in 1941. Disbandment in 1957 of the by-then 'Royal' Auxiliary Air Force was fiercely resisted, but inevitable.Originally published in 1964 to great acclaim, this second edition features a wealth of brand new content in the form of newly uncovered documentation and photo illustrations. It is set to bring the story of this eccentric and dynamic squadron to a whole new audience of aviation and military enthusiasts.As seen in the Western Morning News and Epping Forest Guardian.
The Royal Air Force at Home
Author : Ian Watson
Publisher : Casemate Publishers
Page : 474 pages
File Size : 10,21 MB
Release : 2010-06-19
Category : History
ISBN : 1783031395
Book Description
"Military public relations endeavors ultimately seek to build a sense of common interests and aims, and so generally foster good relations with the people they defend, and there in ensure a stable society. The armed forces when engaging on any public relations exercise, have traditionally sought to provide an entertaining spectacle. For years this has been typified by parades, bands, mock battles, drill displays and other relevant feats of military prowess which have captured the imagination of the public and inspired potential recruits. The 20th Century brought a new dimension to the field of warfare and subsequently added a new strand to the fabric of public ceremony and displays by the armed forces. That new dimension was the arrival of powered flight.Display flying began within five years of the Wright Brothers making their milestone first flight. The first events staged in Britain which centered on demonstrations by flying machines, were organized by the town councils of Blackpool and Doncaster and were held within days of each other in October 1909. 1920 was the year that the first of the famed and legendary Hendon Air Pageants was staged, and this is where military air shows traditionally began. The Hendon Displays were organized and staged by the still fledging Royal Air Force and it was probably due in no small part to the prestige and spectacle of this fresh new dimension of military pageantry, together with other like events held at RAF airfields through the next two decades, that the very existence of the RAF was saved from the threat of abolition. The history of the RAF's commitment (one that compares almost uniquely with other air forces) toward display flying through the years after World War II has now come of age. This account of their record in this often overlooked but then again traditional field of military customs, describes and illustrates the major public RAF events since 1920."
The Battle of Britain
Author : Jon Lake
Publisher : Amber Books Ltd
Page : 214 pages
File Size : 13,67 MB
Release : 2012-07-18
Category : History
ISBN : 1908273917
Book Description
In the summer of 1940, the most important battle in the history of air warfare was fought between the British Royal Air Force and the German Luftwaffe in the skies over southern Britain. Superbly illustrated, The Battle of Britain provides a gripping account of the conflict.
This Other London: Adventures in the Overlooked City
Author : John Rogers
Publisher : Harper Collins
Page : 366 pages
File Size : 39,33 MB
Release : 2014-04-22
Category : Travel
ISBN : 0007557183
Book Description
Join John Rogers as he ventures out into an uncharted London like a redbrick Indiana Jones in search of the lost meaning of our metropolitan existence. Nursing two reluctant knees and a can of Stella, he perambulates through the seasons seeking adventure in our city’s remote and forgotten reaches.
The Next War in the Air
Author : Brett Holman
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 303 pages
File Size : 35,77 MB
Release : 2016-02-17
Category : History
ISBN : 1317022637
Book Description
In the early twentieth century, the new technology of flight changed warfare irrevocably, not only on the battlefield, but also on the home front. As prophesied before 1914, Britain in the First World War was effectively no longer an island, with its cities attacked by Zeppelin airships and Gotha bombers in one of the first strategic bombing campaigns. Drawing on prewar ideas about the fragility of modern industrial civilization, some writers now began to argue that the main strategic risk to Britain was not invasion or blockade, but the possibility of a sudden and intense aerial bombardment of London and other cities, which would cause tremendous destruction and massive casualties. The nation would be shattered in a matter of days or weeks, before it could fully mobilize for war. Defeat, decline, and perhaps even extinction, would follow. This theory of the knock-out blow from the air solidified into a consensus during the 1920s and by the 1930s had largely become an orthodoxy, accepted by pacifists and militarists alike. But the devastation feared in 1938 during the Munich Crisis, when gas masks were distributed and hundreds of thousands fled London, was far in excess of the damage wrought by the Luftwaffe during the Blitz in 1940 and 1941, as terrible as that was. The knock-out blow, then, was a myth. But it was a myth with consequences. For the first time, The Next War in the Air reconstructs the concept of the knock-out blow as it was articulated in the public sphere, the reasons why it came to be so widely accepted by both experts and non-experts, and the way it shaped the responses of the British public to some of the great issues facing them in the 1930s, from pacifism to fascism. Drawing on both archival documents and fictional and non-fictional publications from the period between 1908, when aviation was first perceived as a threat to British security, and 1941, when the Blitz ended, and it became clear that no knock-out blow was coming, The Next War in the Air provides a fascinating insight into the origins and evolution of this important cultural and intellectual phenomenon, Britain's fear of the bomber.
Defending Essex
Author : Mike Osborne
Publisher : The History Press
Page : 367 pages
File Size : 31,85 MB
Release : 2013-02-01
Category : History
ISBN : 0752492373
Book Description
For 2,000 years Essex, the county with the longest coast-line in England and dominating the eastern approaches to London, has been in the front-line against foreign invasion, from the Romans to the Spanish Armada to the two World Wars. It has also been involved in civil disorder, from the Anarchy and the Peasants' Revolt to the English Civil War. Many reminders of these scenes of conflict may be seen in the landscape - Iron Age forts, a Roman walled town, medieval castles, strong-houses and homestead moats, coastal fortifications from Napoleonic times and earlier, and Victorian barracks and the drill halls of the Volunteers. From the twentieth century there are still more sites: military airfields from the First World War and Battle of Britain fighter airfields, radar sites and later bomber bases from the Second. Anti-invasion defenses line the coast, linear defenses criss-cross the landscape, and AA sites are everywhere to be found. Taking the story all the way up to the nuclear threat of the Cold War, this guide will interest residents and visitors alike.
