Description

Looking back at his career from its early post-war beginnings flying out of Croydon airport through to the BEA jet services of the mid-1970s, the author presents the reader with an enthralling tale of technical development and often dramatic and sometimes amusing incidents. There is a tense account of the Viking flight that was almost destroyed by a bomb over Dieppe in 1950, a wealth of interesting and unexpected technical detail and a real flavour of how exciting it must have been to work in civil aviation in the 1950s and 60s.

There are also some fascinating comments concerning various types of aircraft that the author flew, giving an insider’s view of what it was like to be at the controls of planes like the almost forgotten Airspeed Elizabethan and the Vickers Vanguard to mention just two. In the latter case, there is also a lengthy section covering the author’s involvement with the pilot training programme, which includes a vivid description of a routine training trip that ended up with the plane flying inverted and being recovered through an 8,000ft dive at very close to the ‘do not exceed speed’!

This is certainly a book that anyone interested in post-war British aviation will enjoy.