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(More customer reviews)The author, through a skillful economy of words, relates his experiences as a fighter pilot in Britain's Fleet Air Arm through 5 years of war.
The Fleet Air Arm, which was detached from the Royal Air Force in the late 1930s, entered the war with several handicaps. One of which was a paucity of quality aircraft. As the war went on and the Fleet Air Arm expanded and was tested in a variety of battles from the Mediterranean (Taranto and Malta) to the Atlantic, the Arctic Ocean, and the Far East, it developed into an invaluable tool in the Allies' efforts to check and defeat the Axis Powers.
Popham's experiences in the Far East, Madagascar, and in the Mediterranean are lllustrative of what the Fleet Air Arm accomplished. He writes with understatement, which nevertheless succeeds in giving the reader a clear view of how the war shaped him.
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Hugh Popham joined the Fleet Air Arm in the summer of 1940 and was soon in training as a pilot at HMS Vincent and then Yeovilton; thereafter his wartime career as a naval pilot took him to the far corners of the world, notably to the Indian Ocean where he had to contend against the Japanese. His story is one of a naval fighter pilot having to do his best with hopelessly inadequate planes. First the Sea Hurricanes, and then the Supermarine Seafires, proved to be less than brilliant machines, the Seafire proving far too fragile for the rigors of carrier operations.
But it is this story, incorporating the kind of detail that is missing from many wartime memoirs, that makes this book so fascinating. His war years on Indomitable, Illustrious, Campania and Striker are described with a modest charm that is so typical of a generation that adapted to their wartime roles with humor, energy and, in the end, great bravery.
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