If you’re an army glider pilot. You’ve got a dodgy job – landing yourself and your troops in the teeth of anything the enemy throws at you. Hazardous at the best of times, it’s grimly suicidal when thick flak is coming up, the exploding shells chucking your frail Horsa all over the sky. If an […]
A proud Red Air Force pilot, Lieutenant Viktor Petrofsky flew his Yak-9 fighter above the skies of the Eastern Front, facing-off against the Luftwaffe and their deadly Focke-Wulf Fw190 aircraft. However, soon disillusioned by his squadron’s harsh treatment at the hands of their feared NKVD political officers, and then shot down by the Germans, Viktor’s […]
They were escaped prisoners-of-war, desperate to risk anything rather than be recaptured. They had even put on enemy uniforms, armed themselves with enemy weapons. There was nothing they would not do to avoid going back into captivity.
At the controls of his trusty Airco DH2 biplane, Lieutenant Andrew Maxwell of the Royal Flying Corps was used to duelling with German pilots high above the trenches. However, after being shot down and taken prisoner by a deranged, sword-wielding enemy officer, Andrew soon wondered which type of duel was more dangerous – in the […]
A stretch of treacherous water to cross, and no boat to do it in… All they had was a few plywood drop tanks jettisoned from aircraft, lengths of bamboo, bits of wood…and their courage. Yes, they needed courage most of all, for entering that stretch of water risked a horrifying death. In the search for […]
Five wounded men walk out of an Army hospital and set off to reach their own units under their own steam. Happens all the time? Not likely, mate – especially when these men were deep inside enemy territory – even on the wrong side of the Mediterranean! So how could they hope to succeed?
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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