MEN OF AIR - The Doomed Youth of Bomber Command

When we first arrived the intelligence officer told us 'Your expectation of life is six weeks. Go back to your huts and make out your wills.'  The winter of 1944 was the most dangerous time to be a combat airman in RAF Bomber Command.  The chances of surviving a tour were as low as one in five, and morale had hit rock bottom.  Men of Air is the extraordinary story of ordinary young men coping with the constant pressure of flying, loss of colleagues, and the threat of death or capture.  

The stories of the famous events and developments of this period - the Great Escape, D-Day, the defeat of the VI menace, the Dambusters' low-level target marking - show how, through sheer grit and determination, these courageous crewmen finally turned the tide against the Germans.  `Thorough, thrilling and profoundly moving' The Times  `Wilson tells their stories with skill and compassion [and] unearths the sheer guts and powerful determination that pushed the men on' Observer