Glider Pilots in Sicily - Hardcover

Peters, Major Mike

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1848846835 ISBN 13: 9781848846838

Publisher: Pen and Sword Military, 2013

Synopsis

The British Airborne landings on Sicily are the least known and, without doubt, the most fraught with political and technical strife. Newly formed Air landing troops were delivered into battle in gliders they knew little about. The men of the Glider Pilot Regiment (GPR) had self-assembled the gliders while living in the empty packing cases. They accomplished this complex and technically challenged task while living on fly ridden, dusty North African airfields. After only a few hours of conversion training they took off for a night flight across the Mediterranean Sea that was to end in near-catastrophe.

With over three hundred soldiers drowned off Sicily that night in July 1943, the first major operation attempted by the British using gliders almost ended in total disaster. In fact a few Airborne troops reached dry land and attacked their objectives. Shining examples of collective and individual acts of courage rocked the Italian and German defenders. This book tells the controversial story of that first mass glider operation and the men who proved the GPR motto – Nothing is Impossible.

This is the first account of the Sicily air landing operation.

About this title

About the Author

Mike Peters - a serving officer in the Army Air Corps - is also a member of the Guild of Battlefield Guides. Throughout his over twenty years of service, the importance of the history of the forebears of his Corps, the Glider Pilot Regiment, has grown on Mike.

Review

Major Mike Peters is a serving Army Air Corps Officer and the Chairman of the International Guild of Battlefield Guides. He cut his teeth as an author with some interesting contributions to the Army Air Corps Newsletter in his youth but current Hawkeye readers will be more familiar with his excellent collaboration with Luuk Buist to publish 'Glider Pilots at Arnhem' in 2009. This latest work does not disappoint. It is well researched and packed with detail but, above all it is very readable and thus effectively informative. Mike has the knack, enviable in gifted historians, of placing first hand accounts alongside the official detail. It works to remind us that there are humans in the machine and that is their bravery and endeavour that makes it work. This is a useful addition to any bookshelf that is dedicated to the Second World War, it is essential to anyone who has an interest in the Glider Pilot Regiment and Airborne Forces but it is also a very good read. - Hawkeye

Edition details

• Publisher: Pen and Sword Military
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1848846835
• ISBN 13: 9781848846838
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 224