Winged Victory. This item is unavailable.Winged Victory

Winged Victory is a 1934 novel by English World War I fighter pilot Victor Maslin Yeates that is widely regarded as a classic description of aerial combat and the futility of war. The novel concerns World War I, the existence pilots lead and the fear involved in flying early biplanes. Its protagonist, Tom Cundall, plans to leave the Royal Air Force when his service is up and live on a West Country farm with his friends. However, by the time he is due to leave the Air Force, all his friends have "gone west". This leaves him a broken man. The narrative combination of action, pathos, humour and humility set against the huge casualties of the RAF in 1918 makes Winged Victory one of the classics of Great War literature.The book is semi-autobiographical, V. M. Yeates having served with 46 Squadron flying Sopwith Camels in 1918 and also having lost all his friends in the war. T. E. Lawrence praised it on its release with the words "Admirable, admirable, admirable. One of the most distinguished histories of the war ... masterly". However, it went out of print due to a lack of a publisher and was soon forgotten.Yeates died in 1934 from tuberculosis.

Yeates was born at Dulwich, and educated at Colfe's School where according to Henry Williamson he used to read Keats under the desk during Maths, explored woods, fields and ponds and kept a tame tawny owl/ Yeates joined the Inns of Court Officer Training Corps in 1916 and transferred to the Royal Flying Corps (later the Royal Air Force) in May 1917. Serving with No. 46 Squadron, to which he was posted in February 1918, he flew 248 hours in Sopwith Camels, crashed four times, was shot down twice and scored five victories thereby achieving "ace" status. After the war, he died of tuberculosis in Fairlight Sanatorium at Hastings in 1934. He was survived by his wife Norah Phelps Yeates (née Richards) and his four children Mary, Joy Elinor (later married hristopher David Vowles), Guy Maslin (later married Binnie Yeates) and Rosalind (later married Edward Cullinan); all of whom had lived with Yeates in a small house in Kent on the Sidcup by-pass of the Dover Road.