Book description
They joined an R. A.F known as "the best flying club in the
world", but when war pitches the young pilots of 409 Squadron into
battle over Germany, their training, tactics and equipment are soon
found wanting, their twin-engined bombers obsolete from the off. Chances
of completing a 30-operation tour? One in three. At best. 409's gung-ho
spirit never dies but it takes a beating in the flak, fighters and
searchlights over the Ruhr... Robinson's crooked salute to the dogged
heroes of the R. A.F.'s early bombing campaign is a wickedly humourous
portrait of men doing their duty in flying death-traps, fully aware, in
those dark days of war, there was nothing else to do but dig in and hang
on. 'Mordantly funny and, in its way, as loud an anti-battle cry as
Catch 22' Toby Clements, Daily Telegraph. Derek Robinson, the son of
a policeman, read history at Cambridge before working in advertising in
London and New York. His novel Goshawk Squadron was shortlisted for the
Booker Prize in 1973.
