Spitfire Against the Odds

192 pages. Illustrations. DJ is price clipped at bottom corner of front flap. Some page edge discoloration noted. Includes Author's Note, Epilogue, and Index. Also contains chapters on Early Days; The Path to the Cockpit; Airborne at Last; A Fighter Pilot is Born; The Waiting Game; Called to Arms; No 130 (Punjab) Squadron; The Big Push; The Last Lap; Enforced Interlude; The Land of the Midnight Sun; Au Revoir to the Service; and Airborne Again. The author enlisted for the RAF as a regular airman when he was 16 years old in 1938, under the mistaken impression that he was well on the road to fulfilling his dream of becoming a fighter pilot. He soon discovered his mistake. Yet against all the odds he managed by sheer determination to becoming a senior NCO and a Spitfire pilot operating over Northern Europe with 130 Squadron. Before that was achieved, he had been an aircraft hand, fire fighter, teleprinter operator, wireless operator, had taken a posting to Air Ministry Signals, had undertaken navigator training, and finally pilot training. In this forthright and honest book he rails against the injustice to NCOs in the service who, however talented, were overlooked because of class snobbery. The memoirs of a navigator in the RAF who made it to fighter pilot, flying first Hurricanes then Spitfires. He describes his experiences flying in the desert, in Italy, in Arnhem, through to the end of the war and the trials and tribulations of service life.…