Customer Reviews

Fighter Boys: The Battle of Britain, 1940

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My prediction is that this book will be nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. If I'm wrong....well, I shouldn't be. That's how good it is. Patrick Bishop has written a thorough, thoughtful and exciting book. He starts off with a quick military history of the aeroplane, covering WWI and including the years between WWI and WWII. He compares developments in Germany and Britain, and charts the organizational evolution of the RAF. We learn about the planes and the people, as well as the processes involved in recruiting and training pilots. Mr. Bishop zeroes in on several pilots, quoting from their letters to family and sweethearts, as well as from memoirs. This provides the human connection, so that we are anxious each time the author describes a dogfight over France, the Channel or England. We are hoping the Hurricanes and Spitfires will all land safely......even though we know they won't. Each time a pilot is killed, we feel it in the pit of the stomach. I've never flown a plane, but I've never been taken closer to the experience than I have in this book. Mr. Bishop magically transports us to the world inhabited by fighter pilots. We learn how the controls feel, what it's like to be in combat (constantly having to move your head around to make sure there are no enemy planes coming at you from any direction...while also going 350 miles an hour and trying to shoot down another plane going the same speed which is taking evasive action), the boredom while waiting to go on a mission....and the fear of being burned, crippled or killed. These men constantly put up a front by joking and downplaying their achievements. But Mr. Bishop never lets us forget their bravery. During the height of the Battle of Britain these men were going up on missions 3 and 4 times a day. They saw fellow pilots go missing, or being wounded or killed, every day. They visited friends in the hospital who were burned so badly that they needed reconstructive surgery. When flying over the Channel they worried about being shot down and, if they survived that experience, dying from hypothermia or by drowning. Regarding the enemy, it was sometimes easy to forget that the German fighters and bombers contained people. With the speed and confusion of combat it seemed normal to think you were fighting a machine rather than a man. Occasionally, the reality was brought home to you- such as when you saw an enemy pilot stuck in his cockpit, frantically attempting to bail out as his damaged plane nosedived into a sickening spin. All pilots loved to fly, but few enjoyed killing. You went up every day and did what you had to do. It helped that you were flying over the land that you loved, and that you knew that the fellow in the Heinkel was trying to drop bombs on that land, and on people that you knew.....and the fellow in the Messerschmitt was trying to make sure that the Heinkel got through to its target. Mr. Bishop never lets us forget how young most of the pilots were...usually, they were in their early 20's. Frankly, at the speeds these planes were going, most men over 30 didn't have the reflexes necessary to avoid being shot down. Because of their youth, most of the men who perished never had the opportunity to fall in love, let alone marry and have a family. They willingly sacrificed themselves so that Britain would have a future as a free country. Winston Churchill was right, and we owe a great deal to Patrick Bishop for not letting us forget this pivotal moment in history.

When you think of the Battle of Britain, one of the most common images conjured up is of pilots asleep or reading or some other thing in a lawnchair, easy chair or perhaps an old deckchair moved outside. I think the best thing I can say about Patrick Bishop's "Fighter Boys: The Battle of Britain, 1940" is that he does an amazing job of putting you in one of those chairs. This is not really a military critique or history of the battle, although Bishop does do some of this. What the author seems to want to do is give you the experience of being in the battle with the pilots that were really there.

We meet several pilots and we go with them into the air, into combat and into the pubs of England. We feel what it is like to sit in one of those chairs wondering when the bell would ring and the order to scramble would come. We also feel what it must have been like to sit in one of those Spitfires or Hurricanes and see the formations of bombers in our windscreens. We must deal, as the pilots did, with the daily sameness of waiting, flying, fighting and coming home to pass out from exhaustion. We feel the fear of facing the formations of bombers, facing the dangers to our loved ones at home and facing the knowledge that we can't know if and when the adversary will give up, or if and when we might have to give up.

We see comrades and friends die. We see them die, as must happen in these circumstances, in horrific, violent ways. We see them lost to the enemies fire and we see them lost tragically and yes, sometimes stupidly, in accidents. They also die, most frustratingly of all, because of miscalculations that send them into combat in machines that are not quite up to the tasks. And at the end of each flight, we retire back to the chair on the lawn, exhausted, passing out almost before we are fully seated, waiting again for the bell to ring and for everything to start all over.

Fighter Boys is really the pilot's stories. There are many wonderful books that analyze the military aspects of the Battle of Britain. This book takes more of a look at the human aspects of the same battle. If you've ever wondered what it might have been like to sit with the pilots of the Battle of Britain and fly alongside them, this book is probably your best opportunity.

As a modern-era fighter pilot, I devour good books and movies describing the evolution of my trade. There have been many dramatic books and movies created describing the "Battle of Britain" and the events surrounding it, but Fighter Boys goes beyond these. It is an extremely comprehensive non-fiction work, a completely historical, detailed recollection based of incredible research by the author including interviews with the pilots who fought and survived, and the families and letters of those who did not survive. It is liberally sprinkled with the pilot's own words, describing their thoughts and feelings about aerial combat, and relating their own experiences. It also includes some recollections from the German side.

The book even devotes quite a bit at the beginning relating the many and varied experiences of the pilots getting into the fighter cadre - their training and initiations, and the varied backgrounds they had. This can seem tedious to the reader looking for dramatic action, but it is essential to laying the basis for the way Fighter Command evolved from a privileged flying club to a "multi-class" tight-knit organization.

When the fighting actually starts, the first hand accounts add a dramatic flare that fiction can't duplicate. The book gives a comprehensive understanding of the stresses, fears and excitement of aerial combat. A very good read for those serious about the history of air warfare.

It is said that we live in a dangerous time, with terrorists and rogue states threatening our way of life and all that. These are serious things, real threats to be sure, but for most of us, most of the time, it's a rather vague and statistical threat we face, not all that different from a hurricane or a traffic accident. Sure it can happen to me me, but it usually doesn't. Things were different in the summer of 1940, though. Hitler needed to take Britain out of his war picture, and the Germans tried their best to bomb the Brits into submission in preparation for invasion. If they had succeeded, it would have been a different world. The RAF pilots and all the people who supported them kept this from happening, but it was a hard fight, a daily struggle against an all too tangible threat. It was a big story, but it was also a lot of personal stories.

I've read a lot of flying books, many on WWII, and a few on the Battle of Britain, including Len Deighton's excellent "Fighter," my previous favorite. This one is essentially an oral history of the Battle, with close-ups of the participants in their own words, through interviews, letters, and diaries. It mostly ignores the strategy, politics, and hardware, but there is plenty of flying action, from the perspective of the pilots themselves. This is what I really liked about it. I got a sense of what it must have been like to live through those times, and for the enormous efforts involved. These boys loved to fly, and it was glorious at times, but there's the other side too -- the many deaths and the horrible burns and the nightmares and the psychic damage. That's all here too, and it's very moving.

So all in all, very well done and recommended. It also has me fired up to visit the RAF Museum in London when I go there in early April (I love the stories, but I love the hardware too!).

N.B. It looks like I only review books I love, and I give them all five stars. I guess this is just a matter of wanting to share something I enjoyed, though I swear if I manage to get through something I truly loathe, I'll give it a bad review!

After having just recently endured a massive, analytically focused study of the Eastern Front by David Glantz it was with great joy that I nosed through my bookshelf in search of a new read. Although tightly focused campaign studies are certainly necessary to piece together the bigger pictures of WWII, they can certainly take all of the pleasure out of reading. With that in mind I grabbed Fighter Boys, by Patrick Bishop as my next choice. I can almost gleefully report that the choice was one of my best of the year.

The goal of Bishop, as stated in his introduction, was to color in the portraits of the pilots responsible for the defense of Britain in the late summer of 1940. His effort is an absolute and unqualified success. His mini bios of the Hurricane and Spitfire pilots, as well as descriptions of life as a pilot, combat and the losses from combat are rich and truly demonstratative of the great cross-section of British society that made up fighter command. This book is a fantastic read and a quick one as well.

Where this book best succeeds is, as mentioned above, in the variety of personal stories that make it up. These are, in turn drawn from a wide range of primary documents, including official Fighter Command sources, memoirs and also interviews with surviving members and family of pilots. Together they describe nearly every aspect of life of fighter pilots in the RAF before, during and even after the Battle of Britain. Furthermore, there is significant space dedicated to those who supported the pilots including women auxiliaries and ground crews.

A second significant area in which the efforts of Bishop are well executed is the thinking behind those in the top echelon of Fighter Command as they prepared to attempt to stifle a certain German invasion of the island. The work and strategic thinking of Air Vice-Marshal Park and Air Chief Marshal Dowding is described in some detail and assist in making the efforts and risks of the pilots of Fighter Command clearer, even though they were not to the men fighting in the air at the time. Through his explanations the fears and plans of these two men bring the individual efforts of those in the air into starker contrast.

The only area in which there was any true lack of clarity was the descriptions of the efforts of the Luftwaffe in specific, as well as the intentions of the German High Command in general. Although this may come across as somewhat trifling of an issue it does take away, ever so slightly, from a clear understanding of the Battle of Britain. Certainly it is somewhat beyond the scope of this work and one can find the answers to this issue in numerous other narratives of the battle, but for the sake of completeness it should have been included to a better degree than it was.

Overall however, this is a magnificent book and one that truly brings alive the stories of the men of those brave men and women who handed Hitler his first defeat of any kind and regardless of the existence of the Royal Navy, almost certainly, singlehandedly denied him the opportunity to launch his planned invasion of the Home Island.

I concur with Mr Loveitt. This book is a tragically moving account of how young men from Britain and Allied Nations came together to resist the aerial might of the Nazis. Without them who knows where we would be today? I cannot better Mr Loveitt's summary of the book itself. I was also peculiarly stricken to tears by Mr Bishop's accounts of how the young fliers often died. Yet, and this is where I gasped with admiration, they always kept a smile on their faces. Back in the Mess they would behave as if they were schoolboys again! They threw rolls at each other and joked as if they were in summer camp (if they had such things which they did not!). Surely there is a lesson here for modern day service personnel serving in the world's trouble spots? Could they not also laugh more? War is grim enouigh without losing the ability to laugh at oneself. I disagree with the idea this book should win a Pulizter. I say put it in for a Nobel Prize. Yes, it is that good!

Baptized during the fire of World War II, Great Britain's Royal Airforce corps of fighter pilots have become the stuff of legends. Dubbed the "Fighter Boys," these young men, mostly between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, were all that stood between their island home and the German invasion. In the months of the "phony war," during the doomed Battle of France, the Fighter Boys provided the support and peace of mind needed by both their own people back home and their French allies. During the German Operation Sealion and the Blitz over London in 1940, they were the only thread that held their country together.

But at the heart of England's renowned fighter pilot corps were ordinary men, who had to learn to deal with the stress and the fear of flying into battle, who had to cope after watching friends and brothers being shot from the sky, who had to keep going, to keep fighting after they had been pushed beyond all limits.

In this remarkable book, Bishop has pulled together the lives of these men--most of them barely old enough to shave--and bound them together within the epic story of a world at war. His tale begins slowly, outlining the birth of fighter pilots during World War I and exploring the world of the RAF before the outbreak of hostilities. Faster and faster the story spirals until we, side by side with these boy pilots, are swept onto the battlefronts of France and, eventually, the desperate Battle of Britain.

Although he never loses sight of the overall picture, Bishop manages to portray the human theme with a singular energy and pathos that leaves the reader's heart aching as each plane finds a grave alongside all those that fell the day before. Wonderfully researched and documented, Fighter Boys is a definitive look into the lives of a most extraordinary group of men.

I have just finished reading this book and I definately give it a Thumbs Up! It starts off in great detail about the events and preparations that led to the Battle of Britain;it even goes back to WWI and talks about some of the aces that flew in that war.
This book is written in great detail, the author really describes the men, the battles, etc. in great detail with such clarity. I would definately recommend this book to any aviation historian who wants to learn more about the Battle of Britain and I'm sure to purchase any other books written by Patrick Bishop-Thank you sir, a wonderful account of the Battle of Britain.

The author indicates the fact that his interest in the subject began when he was a child. In the late 1950's and early 1960's, spent cartridge cases could still be found in places, as could Anderson shelters and weed-filled lots where bomb-destroyed buildings once stood.

The reader may be surprised to learn that Luftwaffe and RAF flyers had often fraternized with each other before WWII. Bishop then provides a rather good history of the battle, blending together technical elements (such as details of the Hurricanes and Spitfires) as well as the political decisions of the leaders. The initial unemotional attitudes of the pilots gave way to strong feelings of hostility owing to such things as the Luftwaffe's observed strafing of columns of defenseless French civilians (p. 254). Not mentioned is the fact that the Luftwaffe had systematically done the same earlier to columns of Polish civilians.

The author describes the Polish pilots as follows: "Contrary to another popular myth, the Poles were not particularly reckless, and their casualty ratios were in line with those of British pilots. It was true, though, that they hated the Germans with an un-Anglo-Saxon vehemence." (p. 240). The reader must realize that the Germans generally respected the British, who were a fellow Teutonic people. On the other hand, the Germans always despised the Poles (e. g., untermenschen, that is, subhumans), inflicting much suffering upon them over many centuries, and most recently commencing a year earlier prior to this Battle.

Nowhere does the author point out the crucial role that Polish airmen played in the Allied victory in the Battle of Britain. To rectify this, please click on 303 Squadron: The Legendary Battle of Britain Fighter Squadron, and read the Peczkis review.

After decades of reflection, it is still believed that the Battle of Britain had been a crucial battle. In fact, Luftwaffe General Werner Kreipe contended that the Luftwaffe's failed attempt to destroy the RAF proved to be the turning point of WWII. (p. 404).

The author provides much detail about the postwar lives of key British airmen. This book closes with description of a ceremony marking the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Britain. Three hundred veterans were on hand in 2000. (p. 399).

"Fighter Boys" gives insights from the WWI days of RFC(Royal Flying Corps) aces like Albert Ball through the buildup to World War II. I've read many books about the RAF and the Battle Of Britain, but this gave many insights that I'd never heard before, such as not everyone thought of Luftwaffe commander and ace Adolf Galland as a "good German", and while I knew Douglas Bader was not the easiest man to get along with, there are a number of instances where he was actively disliked. There's also quite a few insights into the feelings of "Stuffy" Dowding's fighter boys about Dowding's and Keith Park's removal after the Battle Of Britain. There's many looks at where the fighter boys came from before the War, and what happened to the survivors after 1945. One thing that was consistent was the admiration the RAF's fighter pilots had for the ground staff, yet another nail in the credibility of Len Deighton's Fighter: The True Story of the Battle of Britain, where Deighton basically calls many "Erks" and other ground staff craven cowards, and I'm currently reading The Few: The American "Knights of the Air" Who Risked Everything to Save Britain in the Summer of 1940, which this is 10 times better than.
This was a non-fiction I could hardly put down.