Customer Reviews

Night Flyer: The Success Story of RAF 100 Group, Mosquitos over the German Night Fighters (Fighter Pilots)

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An excellent book for those interested in night fighters during WWII, well accompanied by Night Fighter, another outstanding night fighter book. The pilot starts his WWII career enlisting in the RAF in the uniform of a Gestapo captain, and the book only gets more interesting from there. I have read several books on the subject of nocturnal Beaufighters and Mossies, and this was the first one to clear up exactly what the navigator saw on the early 'A.I.' sets as Lewis Brandon provides a nice series of pictures of what an interception looks like on the screens of AI.

This is an old fashioned book celebrating the old fashioned virtues that got Britain through WWII - determination, understatement and raw courage. Reading this account of the war in the air 70 years after the events, one is struck by how basic everything was and how bravely the young flyers confronted incredible hazards, night after night in plywood planes! Squadron-Leader Brandon and his pilot Wing-Commander Benson flew over 120 sorties for the RAF and they got through on sheer guts and a good measure of luck. In the process, the author won the DSO, the DFC and bar flying in all weathers, at all altitudes and coping with everything the enemy fighters and anti-aircraft batteries could throw at him. As if this wasn't enough, he also had to deal with mechanical breakdowns and what we have since come to know as "friendly fire". His missions were long, cold and extremely dangerous and he bore it all with commitment and great humor. Brandon can be a little technical at times when recounting the evolution of airborne radar on which as navigator he became a pioneering expert and trainer, but it remains riveting reading. Filled with derring-do, perhaps the most interesting part of the book is at the tail end of the war and records successes when pitted one on one against the terrifying V2 flying bombs. We will remember them ...

I will never know how good the writing is, as I had to send back both successive copies I got from Amazon. It seems the entire printing run for "Night Flyer" was put into the cover back-to front and upside-down. Amazon is supposed to be working with the publisher to get a good run to sell, but I don't know the timeline on that.