Just Finished Reading: Squadron Airborne by Elleston Trevor (FP: 1955) [238pp] 

Summer, 1940. Nineteen-year-old pilot officer Peter Stuyckes (pronounced Stewks) wasn’t aware of it yet, but his first day with the squadron was going to be one hell of a day. On arrival the Squadron Leader looked him up and down and told him to get his gear. They were going to ‘stooge’ around for a while to see what’s what. Stuyckes, understandably nervous, failed to impress all that much by trying to land back at the airfield without lowering his undercarriage. Forgiving, but less than impressed, the Squadron Leader calmly explained just how expensive and in great demand the Spitfire was and that he should kindly remember to lower his wheels next time. Almost before the embarrassment had faded a loud voice over the Tannoy called out **SCRAMBLE!**. Told to stand off to watch and learn, Stuyckes did the only thing he could. Picking an enemy bomber he attacked...  

This is my second experience with the Imperial War Museum Wartime Classics series. As before the author drew on his own wartime experience as an aircraft engineer with the RAF during the Battle of Britain. The novel was split between action in the skies over Kent with some very creditable battle scenes and life on the ground with the crews responsible for fixing, arming and fuelling the main defence against Luftwaffe attack and the long-awaited for invasion. The whole novel takes place over a few weeks – a month at most I think – where the pilots are called upon to scramble more and more often each day and the ground crews work all the harder to keep all twelve aircraft in tip-top fighting condition which, as the days roll on, becomes steadily more difficult. 

A few things stuck out in particular. The most surprising, which thinking about it shouldn't have surprised me, was that one of the engineer ground crew was a woman. I was aware of the number of women posted to RAF stations in various roles but I don’t think I’d come across female flight engineers before. I’ve certainly seen pics of female engineers in other roles – building tanks, building aircraft (in factories), fixing trains – but not in a front line almost combat role. Of course, later on, women did ‘man’ anti-aircraft guns across Britain but it did seem odd in this context. 

I did think, at least initially, that the RAF pilots portrayed here were just *too* good and seemed to be responsible for a higher number of enemy downed aircraft than seemed reasonable. As the novel progressed however the strain and the British casualties began to show. There were clear cases of PTSD across the squadron with several characters voicing the opinion that they did not expect to survive the battle. Of course, quite a few didn’t so I’d recommend not getting TOO attached to anyone in the novel. An interesting read in many ways and I’m looking forward to moving on to the next few books dealing with the ‘Blitz’ from the civilian PoV. Recommended.