Down to Earth: A Fighter Pilot Recounts His Experiences of Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, Dieppe, D-Day and Beyond

by OwenZupp (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2007

  $5.01

  In Down to Earth Squadron Leader McGlashan reflects honestly on his enthralling and diverse RAF career, one that began with the rag and tube of Hawker biplanes in 1939 and closed in the jet era of the late 1950s. Shot down over the beaches of Dunkirk in heated aerial combat, we follow the footsteps of the nineteen year old along the debris-littered sands and beyond. From the protection of vulnerable convoys to the pioneering days of night-fighting and airborne radar, McGlashan is in the midst of the action. Flying in support of the ill-fated landing at Dieppe and on clandestine night operations before D-Day, he takes an active role in some of the RAF's most significant operations of World War Two. Interspersed throughout are tales of camaraderie and humour. Away from the front line, McGlashan was seconded to BOAC to fly airliners out of Cairo, tasked to ferry all manner of aircraft at the war's end and serve Cyprus at the height of a very nasty campaign. It is a journey of tremendous diversity, punctuated by a series of close calls and inevitable losses. Half a century later, retired and living in Australia, Kenneth McGlashan is drawn back to 1940 with the discovery of his crashed Hurricane surfacing through the sands of Dunkirk. In an emotional pilgrimage, he is reunited with the steed of his youth and its bullet-ridden cockpit.