Eyewitness RAF

A detailed, realistic picture of what it was like to serve in the Royal Air Force during WWII, both on the ground and in the air, using firsthand accounts.

Much has been written about the Royal Air Force during the Second World Warmemoirs, biographies, histories of Fighter and Bomber commands, technical studies of the aircraft, accounts of individual operations and exploitsbut few books have attempted to take the reader on a journey through basic training and active service as air or ground crew and eventual demobilization at the end of the war. That is the aim of James Goulty's Eyewitness RAF. Using a vivid selection of testimony from men and women, he offers a direct insight into every aspect of wartime life in the service.

Throughout the book the emphasis is on the individual's experience of the RAFthe preparations for flying, flying itself, the daily routines of an air base, time on leave, and the issues of discipline, morale, and motivation. A particularly graphic section describes, in the words of the men themselves, what it felt like to go on operations and the impact of casualtiesairmen who were killed, injured, or taken prisoner.

What emerges is a fascinatingly varied inside view of the RAF that is perhaps less heroic and glamorous than the image created by some postwar accountsbut gives readers today a much more realistic appreciation of the whole gamut of life in the RAF seventy-plus years ago.

Dettagli