Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent unused condition. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> 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. Guy Gibson fought from the first days of the ‘phoney’ war (phoney because we had nothing to keep fighting with) until his death. He lived to see the dawn of certain victory and no one man did more to bring it about. He would not stop fighting. He resisted or avoided all efforts to rest him from operations. For his first ‘rest’ he asked to be transferred to night fighting and as a highly skilled night pilot he was of great value to Fighter Command in raising and training the night-fighting force which eventually defeated the ‘blitz’. To enforce a second ‘rest’ on him I had to make a personal appeal to another warrior of similar calibre – Winston Spencer Churchill – who there and then ordered Gibson down to Chequers and took him with him to the United States. There he arranged. for Gibson to be detained for a short period of travelling round air bases to talk to American airmen. In a third and final effort to force him to rest from operations he was put on his Group’s staff. A few days later he was found in his office with literally – tears in his eyes at being separated from his beloved crews and unable to go on operations. It was in fact breaking his heart. He always had direct access to me and on further pressure from him and his A.O.C. I quite wrongly allowed him to return to operations. He appointed himself ‘Master Bomber’ – the most dangerous and most vital task of all on his last operation which was of course a complete success. He was heard to give his crews a pat on the back over the radio and start them homeward. He never returned. (LL)