Damned Good Show

They joined an R.A.F. known as 'the best flying club in the world', but when war pitches the young pilots of 409 Squadron into battle over Germany, their training, tactics and equipment are soon found wanting, their twin-engined bombers obsolete from the off. Chances of completing a 30-operation tour? One in three. At best.

Robinson's crooked salute to the dogged heroes of the R.A.F.'s early bombing campaign is a wickedly humourous portrait of men doing their duty in flying death traps, fully aware, in those dark days of war, there was nothing else to do but dig in and hang on.

“'Tough, taut prose that pulls you through the book like a steel cable' Nicholas Lezard, Guardian.-- Guardian”

'Tough, taut prose that pulls you through the book like a steel cable' Nicholas Lezard, Guardian. Guardian
'Mordantly funny and, in its way, as loud an anti-battle cry as Catch 22' Toby Clements, Telegraph. Telegraph

Derek Robinson, the son of a policeman, read history at Cambridge before working in advertising in London and New York. His novel Goshawk Squadron was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1971.

1939. When war pitches the young pilots of 409 Squadron into battle over Germany, their training, tactics and equipment are soon found wanting, their twin-engined bombers obsolete from the off. Chances of completing a 30-operation tour? One in three. At best. 409's gung-ho spirit never dies - but it takes a beating in the flak, fighters and searchlights over the Ruhr. The hardest part of any war is not winning but slogging on the avoid defeat. Robinson's crooked salute to the dogged heroes of the R.A.F.'s early bombing campaign is a wickedly humorous portrait of men doing their duty in flying death traps - fully aware in those dark days that there was nothing else to do but dig in and hang on.

They joined an R.A.F. known as 'the best flying club in the world', but when war pitches the young pilots of 409 Squadron into battle over Germany, their training, tactics and equipment are soon found wanting, their twin-engined bombers obsolete from the off. Chances of completing a 30-operation tour? One in three. At best. Robinson's crooked salute to the dogged heroes of the R.A.F.'s early bombing campaign is a wickedly humourous portrait of men doing their duty in flying death traps, fully aware, in those dark days of war, there was nothing else to do but dig in and hang on.

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