Secondhand WWII Aviation Bargain Book Box SP2932

Secondhand WWII Aviation Bargain Book Box SP2932

Twenty-one books on the air war of 1939–45 — fiction and non-fiction together, from first-hand pilot memoirs and squadron histories to the thrillers they inspired. Spitfires, Lancasters, Mosquitoes, and the men who flew them.

1. Wings 1: Typhoon Strike — Charles Anthony — The opening novel in Anthony's Wings series, following the low-level Typhoon strike pilots whose missions offered almost no margin for error and no sympathy from the statisticians.
2. Mosquito Run — Richard Herman Jr. — A fast-paced aviation thriller built around the legendary twin-engine de Havilland Mosquito — fast enough to outrun most interceptors, and here used for a mission that requires exactly that.
3. Trophy — Julian Jay Savarin — Aerial combat fiction described on its cover as outgunning Top Gun for authenticity; Savarin's most technically driven novel.
4. The Sea Shall Not Have Them — John Harris — The real-time rescue of a downed aircrew from the winter North Sea, told with Harris's gift for sustained suspense — the hours ticking down against the cold and the search aircraft running low on fuel.
5. Stephen Morris — Nevil Shute — Shute's first novel, written in the 1920s: an early aviator, a love story, and the quiet technical confidence that would define everything he wrote after.
6. Lancaster Target — Jack Currie — Currie flew thirty operations over Germany with Bomber Command. This is his first-hand account of what that looked like from the pilot's seat — the briefings, the night sky, the flak.
7. Hunters from the Sky — Charles Whiting — The story of the German Fallschirmjäger — the parachute regiment that captured Crete and Fort Eben-Emael and was eventually ground to pieces on the Eastern Front.
8. Into the Silk — Ian Mackersey — The true stories of airmen who baled out and survived: the parachute as last resort, the descent, the capture or evasion, the long way home.
9. Rear Gunner — John Beede — The most isolated and most exposed position in a Lancaster: Beede's account of operations over Germany from the rear turret, where the cold and the loneliness were constants and the life expectancy was not encouraging.
10. The Ship-Hunters — R.E. Gillman DFC, DFM — Anti-shipping strike operations flown at masthead height against heavily armed Axis convoys in the Mediterranean and North Sea — one of the most dangerous specialisations of the air war.
11. Best Foot Forward — Colin Hodgkinson — Hodgkinson lost both legs before the war and fought to fly anyway. The story of how he became a pilot despite everything the RAF's medical board could do to prevent it.
12. Ginger Lacey Fighter Pilot — Richard Townshend Bickers — "Ginger" Lacey shot down more enemy aircraft during the Battle of Britain than any other RAF pilot. Bickers's biography of one of the war's great natural air fighters.
13. One Man's Window — Denis Barnham — The air battle to hold Malta, waged with only a handful of battle-scarred Spitfires against overwhelming Italian and German numbers. Barnham flew through it and kept a diary.
14. Spitfire Squadron — ed. David Guthrie — Stories of the Spitfire pilots of World War II, drawn from veterans who flew the most iconic fighter of the conflict, across every theatre from the Battle of Britain to the Pacific.
15. Fighter Pilot — N.S. Bennett-Gnoss — A squadron memoir tracing the combat career of an RAF fighter pilot through the campaigns of the European theatre.
16. Operation Mercury — (War series) — The German airborne assault on Crete in May 1941: the Fallschirmjäger's greatest operation and one of the costliest — so many parachutists died that Hitler never authorised a major airborne assault again.
17. Strike from the Sky: The Battle of Britain Story — Alexander McKee — One of the most thorough accounts of the summer of 1940, built from interviews with surviving pilots on both sides of the Channel.
18. Who Won the Battle of Britain? — H.R. Allen DFC — A controversial reappraisal by one of "the Few" that challenges the official version of events and asks hard questions about command decisions and the cost of the victory.
19. Faith Hope and Charity — Kenneth Poolman — The three Gloster Sea Gladiator biplanes that defended Malta in June 1940: the aircraft were almost obsolete, the odds were impossible, and somehow they held.
20. The Fighter Aces of the R.A.F. — E.C.R. Baker — Profiles of the RAF's highest-scoring pilots across all theatres of the Second World War, from Johnnie Johnson to Paddy Finucane.
21. Last Call for HMS Edinburgh — Frank Pearce — The Edinburgh was sunk in the Barents Sea in 1942 with five tons of Soviet gold aboard. Pearce's account of the ship, her crew, and the convoy war on the Arctic run.