Enemy Coast Ahead - Uncensored: The Real Guy Gibson

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They all attended an investiture at Buckingham Palace ( June 22nd ), performed by the Queen Elizabeth ( the futur Queen Mother, 1900 - 2002 ). If you are looking for a firsthand account of life in the RAF during the Second World War including the inter-service rivalry and animosity (the RAF accidentally attacked Royal Navy vessels and vice versa, and the army were resentful of the lack of air support during the Dunkirk evacuation; a criticism not entirely justified) then you could do a lot worse than read this. I'd first seen a copy of Guy Gibson's Enemy Coast Ahead some thirty years ago and I'd been looking forward to reading the 'Uncensored' version for some time. from some of the most experienced crews in Bomber command and the difficulties that arose, how they were solved and finally to the raid itself which was a great success but at the cost of the lives of 54 air crew. All or a portion of this article consists of text from Wikipedia, and is therefore Creative Commons Licensed under GFDL.

I first read Enemy Coast Ahead when I was a teenager, having just seen the film The Dambusters, and finding the whole character and story of Guy Gibson one of the most compelling and amazing stories of the second world war. An average student, Gibson always had a passion for flying, and commenced flying training in November 1936 at the Bristol Flying School. The book itself is produced to a very high standard, with an excellent selection of crisply reproduced photographs, two useful appendices on the Dams Raid and an index (none of which were included in the Pan paperback which my father purchased in 1955). The Greenhill edition also includes extensive notes by Dr Robert Owen, official historian of 617 Squadron and more than 100 photographs, many of which had not been published elsewhere before. The only drawback in this memoir is that several times he would introduce a topic and then hesitate to discuss it saying that he lacked the time to do so.I found that fascinating and somewhat awe inspiring given that he did this along with many others in his early twenties when (at that age) I was still feeling sorry for myself because some girl or another thought I was a bit spotty. We were out to bomb them until they found themselves weak and punch-drunk from our blows, so that they would fall back before our invading armies. A definitive new edition of a classic memoir, published in association with the RAF Museum, complete with notes from leading historians.

Bar ( August 12th, 1918 - September 19th, 1944 ) was born in Simla ( former British India, Shimla, present - day Himachal Pradesh, India ).Fascinating how the crews has to use flares and incinary bombs to make a visible track to the target. in the age of the dictators and the appeasers, joining the RAP pre-war when it was the best flying club in the world.

It’s astonishing from this distance of time to consider that he had risen to the rank of Wing Commander, won the DSO (and bar), DFC (and bar), the Victoria Cross, the Commander of the Legion of Merit, commanded the most famous WW2 RAF squadron and led its most famous raid all before the age of 26! This new book has been published to mark the 75th anniversary of his death and includes an introduction by James Holland, a historian and broadcaster, and notes by Dr. In this book he tells of the Bomber's work as he saw it from the necessarily somewhat circumscribed viewpoint of an individual cog in a vast machine, as Commander of a Flight and later of a Squadron.

That fame was reinforced by the popular postwar movie "The Dambusters", and by a series of books, especially Max Hastings' updated "Operation Chastise". Discover the joy of reading with us, your trusted source for affordable books that do not compromise on quality. The new edition retains the introduction by Sir Arthur Harris and adds new commentary from historian James Holland. In the campaign game you will requisition and then train your crew to fly at exceptionally low altitude, maintain a steady speed, locate the target in the dead of night, and release ordnance at precisely the right distance from the lip of the dam. clean and otherwise unmarked on strong mildly age-toned paper; front gutter cracked; photo portrait of author frontis.