Fighter Boys: The Battle of Britain, 1940

by Patrick Bishop

Book Overview

The summer of 1940 was supposed to be the beginning of the end of Britain. Europe had fallen to Hitler's storm troops with terrifying speed, and once the Royal Air Force was destroyed, Britain was next. But that was precisely where the Nazis stumbled. For 123 days, while Herman Goering sent wave after wave of Luftwaffe fighters to rain down fire on Britain, three thousand young RAF airmen fought back with a ferocity and agility that stunned the world...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0670032301
• ISBN13: 9780670032303
• Release Date: August 2003
• Publisher: Viking Books
• Length: 434 Pages
• Weight: 1.69 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.3" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

Fantastic Story of the Men Who Protected Britain in 1940

After having just recently endured a massive, analytically focused study of the Eastern Front by David Glantz it was with great joy that I nosed through my bookshelf in search of a new read. Although tightly focused campaign studies are certainly necessary to piece together the bigger pictures of WWII, they can certainly take all of the pleasure out of reading. With that in mind I grabbed Fighter Boys, by Patrick Bishop as my next choice. I can almost gleefully report that the choice was one of my best of the year. The goal of Bishop, as stated in his introduction, was to color in the portraits of the pilots responsible for the defense of Britain in the late summer of 1940. His effort is an absolute and unqualified success. His mini bios of the Hurricane and Spitfire pilots, as well as descriptions of life as a pilot, combat and the losses from combat are rich and truly demonstratative of the great cross-section of British society that made up fighter command. This book is a fantastic read and a quick one as well. Where this book best succeeds is, as mentioned above, in the variety of personal stories that make it up. These are, in turn drawn from a wide range of primary documents, including official Fighter Command sources, memoirs and also interviews with surviving members and family of pilots. Together they describe nearly every aspect of life of fighter pilots in the RAF before, during and even after the Battle of Britain. Furthermore, there is significant space dedicated to those who supported the pilots including women auxiliaries and ground crews. A second significant area in which the efforts of Bishop are well executed is the thinking behind those in the top echelon of Fighter Command as they prepared to attempt to stifle a certain German invasion of the island. The work and strategic thinking of Air Vice-Marshal Park and Air Chief Marshal Dowding is described in some detail and assist in making the efforts and risks of the pilots of Fighter Command clearer, even though they were not to the men fighting in the air at the time. Through his explanations the fears and plans of these two men bring the individual efforts of those in the air into starker contrast. The only area in which there was any true lack of clarity was the descriptions of the efforts of the Luftwaffe in specific, as well as the intentions of the German High Command in general. Although this may come across as somewhat trifling of an issue it does take away, ever so slightly, from a clear understanding of the Battle of Britain. Certainly it is somewhat beyond the scope of this work and one can find the answers to this issue in numerous other narratives of the battle, but for the sake of completeness it should have been included to a better degree than it was. Overall however, this is a magnificent book and one that truly brings alive the stories of the men of those brave men and women who handed Hitler his first defeat of any kind and regardless of the

Close-up views of "The Few"

It is said that we live in a dangerous time, with terrorists and rogue states threatening our way of life and all that. These are serious things, real threats to be sure, but for most of us, most of the time, it's a rather vague and statistical threat we face, not all that different from a hurricane or a traffic accident. Sure it can happen to me me, but it usually doesn't. Things were different in the summer of 1940, though. Hitler needed to take Britain out of his war picture, and the Germans tried their best to bomb the Brits into submission in preparation for invasion. If they had succeeded, it would have been a different world. The RAF pilots and all the people who supported them kept this from happening, but it was a hard fight, a daily struggle against an all too tangible threat. It was a big story, but it was also a lot of personal stories. I've read a lot of flying books, many on WWII, and a few on the Battle of Britain, including Len Deighton's excellent "Fighter," my previous favorite. This one is essentially an oral history of the Battle, with close-ups of the participants in their own words, through interviews, letters, and diaries. It mostly ignores the strategy, politics, and hardware, but there is plenty of flying action, from the perspective of the pilots themselves. This is what I really liked about it. I got a sense of what it must have been like to live through those times, and for the enormous efforts involved. These boys loved to fly, and it was glorious at times, but there's the other side too -- the many deaths and the horrible burns and the nightmares and the psychic damage. That's all here too, and it's very moving. So all in all, very well done and recommended. It also has me fired up to visit the RAF Museum in London when I go there in early April (I love the stories, but I love the hardware too!). N.B. It looks like I only review books I love, and I give them all five stars. I guess this is just a matter of wanting to share something I enjoyed, though I swear if I manage to get through something I truly loathe, I'll give it a bad review!

Well-researched, detailed and comprehensive history

As a modern-era fighter pilot, I devour good books and movies describing the evolution of my trade. There have been many dramatic books and movies created describing the "Battle of Britain" and the events surrounding it, but Fighter Boys goes beyond these. It is an extremely comprehensive non-fiction work, a completely historical, detailed recollection based of incredible research by the author including interviews with the pilots who fought and survived, and the families and letters of those who did not survive. It is liberally sprinkled with the pilot's own words, describing their thoughts and feelings about aerial combat, and relating their own experiences. It also includes some recollections from the German side.The book even devotes quite a bit at the beginning relating the many and varied experiences of the pilots getting into the fighter cadre - their training and initiations, and the varied backgrounds they had. This can seem tedious to the reader looking for dramatic action, but it is essential to laying the basis for the way Fighter Command evolved from a privileged flying club to a "multi-class" tight-knit organization.When the fighting actually starts, the first hand accounts add a dramatic flare that fiction can't duplicate. The book gives a comprehensive understanding of the stresses, fears and excitement of aerial combat. A very good read for those serious about the history of air warfare.

superb

I concur with Mr Loveitt. This book is a tragically moving account of how young men from Britain and Allied Nations came together to resist the aerial might of the Nazis. Without them who knows where we would be today? I cannot better Mr Loveitt's summary of the book itself. I was also peculiarly stricken to tears by Mr Bishop's accounts of how the young fliers often died. Yet, and this is where I gasped with admiration, they always kept a smile on their faces. Back in the Mess they would behave as if they were schoolboys again! They threw rolls at each other and joked as if they were in summer camp (if they had such things which they did not!). Surely there is a lesson here for modern day service personnel serving in the world's trouble spots? Could they not also laugh more? War is grim enouigh without losing the ability to laugh at oneself. I disagree with the idea this book should win a Pulizter. I say put it in for a Nobel Prize. Yes, it is that good!

From Sopwiths To Spitfires

My prediction is that this book will be nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. If I'm wrong....well, I shouldn't be. That's how good it is. Patrick Bishop has written a thorough, thoughtful and exciting book. He starts off with a quick military history of the aeroplane, covering WWI and including the years between WWI and WWII. He compares developments in Germany and Britain, and charts the organizational evolution of the RAF. We learn about the planes and the people, as well as the processes involved in recruiting and training pilots. Mr. Bishop zeroes in on several pilots, quoting from their letters to family and sweethearts, as well as from memoirs. This provides the human connection, so that we are anxious each time the author describes a dogfight over France, the Channel or England. We are hoping the Hurricanes and Spitfires will all land safely......even though we know they won't. Each time a pilot is killed, we feel it in the pit of the stomach. I've never flown a plane, but I've never been taken closer to the experience than I have in this book. Mr. Bishop magically transports us to the world inhabited by fighter pilots. We learn how the controls feel, what it's like to be in combat (constantly having to move your head around to make sure there are no enemy planes coming at you from any direction...while also going 350 miles an hour and trying to shoot down another plane going the same speed which is taking evasive action), the boredom while waiting to go on a mission....and the fear of being burned, crippled or killed. These men constantly put up a front by joking and downplaying their achievements. But Mr. Bishop never lets us forget their bravery. During the height of the Battle of Britain these men were going up on missions 3 and 4 times a day. They saw fellow pilots go missing, or being wounded or killed, every day. They visited friends in the hospital who were burned so badly that they needed reconstructive surgery. When flying over the Channel they worried about being shot down and, if they survived that experience, dying from hypothermia or by drowning. Regarding the enemy, it was sometimes easy to forget that the German fighters and bombers contained people. With the speed and confusion of combat it seemed normal to think you were fighting a machine rather than a man. Occasionally, the reality was brought home to you- such as when you saw an enemy pilot stuck in his cockpit, frantically attempting to bail out as his damaged plane nosedived into a sickening spin. All pilots loved to fly, but few enjoyed killing. You went up every day and did what you had to do. It helped that you were flying over the land that you loved, and that you knew that the fellow in the Heinkel was trying to drop bombs on that land, and on people that you knew.....and the fellow in the Messerschmitt was trying to make sure that the Heinkel got through to its target. Mr. Bishop never lets us forget how young most of the pilots were...usually, they were in their ea