The Flying Erk
The Flying Erk

Author: David R Roberts

Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd

Published: 2020-05-28

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 1838593888

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This is not a tale of flying aces or great heroics. Set against the unfolding backdrop of the Second World War, it is the story of an ordinary young ground crew airman living through extraordinary times and a long way from home. Told largely through his personal diaries and letters, The Flying Erk charts the highs and lows of Leading Aircraftman Ray Roberts’s war-time experiences. It shows why he volunteers for the RAF, leaving behind his family and his girl. From his home town in Staffordshire, it follows Ray’s journey through basic training and a two-month circuitous sea voyage before recounting his contributions to the North Africa campaign and the relief of Malta (“the most bombed place on earth”). Living conditions are harsh and illness rife, the work gruelling and often dangerous. But close friendships, shared humour and thoughts of a better future inspired by mail from home provide welcome respites from the hardships and toil. And then there’s Dim the Wonder Dog. At its heart is a love story, revealing the stages of a budding romance between two people kept apart by war. At first glance it’s a familiar picture: boy meets girl, boy leaves for war, love develops at a distance. But things do not stay that simple: circumstances and people change. It’s a love story with a difference. World War 2 was a long and bloody conflict in which few lives were left untouched and whose outcomes reverberate to this day. From the outbreak of hostilities in 1939 to the Allied victory in 1945, the main developments of that conflict are tracked and their impact on Ray, his girl and their relationship clearly seen.

Eyewitness RAF
Eyewitness RAF

Author: James Goulty

Publisher: Pen and Sword Aviation

Published: 2020-12-14

Total Pages: 393

ISBN-13: 1526752387

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A detailed, realistic picture of what it was like to serve in the Royal Air Force during WWII, both on the ground and in the air, using firsthand accounts. Much has been written about the Royal Air Force during the Second World War—memoirs, biographies, histories of Fighter and Bomber commands, technical studies of the aircraft, accounts of individual operations and exploits—but few books have attempted to take the reader on a journey through basic training and active service as air or ground crew and eventual demobilization at the end of the war. That is the aim of James Goulty’s Eyewitness RAF. Using a vivid selection of testimony from men and women, he offers a direct insight into every aspect of wartime life in the service. Throughout the book the emphasis is on the individual’s experience of the RAF—the preparations for flying, flying itself, the daily routines of an air base, time on leave, and the issues of discipline, morale, and motivation. A particularly graphic section describes, in the words of the men themselves, what it felt like to go on operations and the impact of casualties—airmen who were killed, injured, or taken prisoner. What emerges is a fascinatingly varied inside view of the RAF that is perhaps less heroic and glamorous than the image created by some postwar accounts—but gives readers today a much more realistic appreciation of the whole gamut of life in the RAF seventy-plus years ago.

Into Enemy Arms
Into Enemy Arms

Author: Michael Hingston

Publisher: Grub Street Publishers

Published: 2006-08-19

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 190811763X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The suspenseful true story of a love that defied Nazi oppression, and a harrowing journey to freedom. In 1945, Ditha Bruncel was living with her parents in the small town of Lossen, in Upper Silesia. Close Jewish friends had vanished, swastikas hung from every building, and neighbors were disappearing in the middle of the night. At the same time more than fifteen hundred British and Commonwealth airmen were being marched out of Stalag Luft VII, a POW camp in the same region. Twenty-three of these prisoners managed to escape from the marching column—and by chance hobbled into Lossen. One among them, Warrant Officer Gordon Slowey, was the man Ditha was destined to meet and fall in love with. Into Enemy Arms tells the extraordinary story of Ditha and the escaped POWs she helped save. Together, they embarked on a dangerous and daring flight out of Germany. As they faced exhaustion, hunger, extreme cold, and the constant risk of discovery, Ditha and Gordon’s love for one another intensified, and so did their determination to survive and escape.

Fighter Pilots in World War II
Fighter Pilots in World War II

Author: Bruce Barrymore Halpenny

Publisher: Casemate Publishers

Published: 2004-01-01

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1844150658

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This is the story of Allied fighter pilots and the part they played in all the principal operational theatres of World War II. It also tells of life on the wartime airfield and how ground crew kept the aircraft ready for action either in the bitter cold of a Scottish winter or the sweltering heat of the North African desert. The book brings home the nervous strain caused by the constant readiness demanded by all those involved with fighter squadron combat and the intense comradeship created in each fighting unit.