Desmond Scott

For the record, this is a prequel to Scott's other book, Typhoon Pilot .
It is another story of a young New Zealander caught up in the patriotic fervor before the Second World War. Friends die. However, he survives training, those chaotic sweeps of shipping in the channel, and night patrols trying to catch Luftwaffe bombers over London. Due to the emergency conditions, the RAF suffered casualties in all the above. Considering the aeronautical technology available, their results were O.K. The cost in young lives is appalling.
Scott also asks some interesting questions:
' What would have happened in the Battle of Britain had Hitler insisted that Goring keep forcing his Luftwaffe on England's hard pressed airfields and the factories that gave birth to their tenants? Why did he turn on Russia when he could have directed his energies and his huge resources in an all-out drive for Suez?
What kind of a man would turn his back on the jet when he could so easily have caught us flat-footed? Or held his night fighter force away from the cramped and over-crowded British bomber bases--a mistake that caused so much pain to his cities and, in the final analysis, dragged him down to defeat? ' (p. 142)… (más)

A decent book although paled into comparison compared to Mike Crosley's 'They gave me a Seafire'. The latter was comprehensive discussing naval tactics, detailed aircraft specs and characteriswtics and so on. This book just covers the campaigns he was involved in. However, given that it was a decent book and a welcome one for me as the first I'd read about flying the deservedl;y maligned Typhoon. Arguably the best low-level attack aircraft of WWII that unfortunately killed as many of its own as the Germans!

But a decent book about the aircraft and the major campaigns from 1943 to VE Day.… (más)