Customer Reviews

Remorseless Road (Airlife Classics)

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James McEwan arrived in Singapore on January 13, 1942, and was posted to Seletar Airbase as the Intelligence Officer for 36 and 100 Squadron. These Squadrons flew the Vickers Vildebeest, a single engined open cockpit biplane with a cruising speed of around 82 mph. With the help of surviving aircrew members McEwan has pieced together the astounding story of the brave men who flew combat operations in these obsolete bombers. Their most dramatic operation was their attack on Japanese ships conducting a landing operation at Endau, Malaya. Half the aircrews were killed pressing home their attacks through hordes of Zero fighters. The first half of the book covers McEwan's service with 36 and 100 Squadrons in Singapore and Java, up until the author's capture in March 1942. The second half of the book picks up the story on the authors arrival in Japan in November 1942. He spent the rest of the war at Ohama on Honshu where the POW's worked a coal mine. In August 1945 the author saw a strange mushroom cloud appear in the distance over Nagasaki. I very much enjoyed the detailed accounts of the previously neglected combat operations of the Vildebeest.