Tail Gunner Takes Over

Flight Lieutenant Richard Rivaz' continues his firsthand account of his time in RAF Bomber Command during the Second World War.

After his heroic exploits as a tail gunner, as narrated in the bestselling Tail Gunner, Rivaz is moved on to flight training in Canada. And for a man used to bombing raids over Europe, the war in Canada is a very different world...

Rivaz describes the intensely rigorous training he undertakes, documenting both his successes and failures as he learns to fly. He reveals what it was like to train as a pilot during the Second World War with a remarkably modest yet vivid narration.

Yet Rivaz' memoir is also an account of those who served around him. Including one pilot who believed gremlins brought down his plane. Written within months of the events, Rivas describes with the immediacy of a man who was in the thick of the action.

Tail Gunner Takes Over is a powerfully personal memoir of one man's war in the air.

Richard Rivaz was born in Assam on 15th March 1908, son of a colonial official in the Indian Civil Service. He later returned to England and studied painting at the Royal College of Art. He became an accomplished artist in the 1930s, before training as a teacher and taking up an appointment at Collyer's School in Sussex, where he taught art. Rivaz volunteered for pilot training in 1940 but was bitterly disappointed to learn that, at the age of thirty-two, he was too old to become a pilot. He commenced training as an air-gunner and saw first service with No. 102 Squadron. He survived many dangerous raids and crashes but was unfortunately killed at the end of the war, when his transport aircraft caught fire on take-off from Brussels airport on 13 October 1945.