Aviation

1938 · 56826 — Edinburgh & London: William Blackwood & Sons Ltd. 1938. 8vo. 4 343 1 pp. Orange cloth purple lettering front cover & spine minor dustsoiling minor darkening to head & foot of spine slight bumping to couple corners w/ d.j. cover art of monoplane soaring into the sky above smoking ruins at the lower fore-edge minor creasing slight chipping to corners minor chipping head & foot of spine w/ old minor tape repairs to verso still VG/G copy. First edition second printing of Oloff de Wet’s memoir as a British volunteer pilot during the Spanish Civil War and considered one of the most descriptive and best accounts by a republican flier during the War. Oloff de Wet 1912-1975 was an RAF trained pilot who grounded out from an accident worked as journalist and pilot in the Second Italo-Ethipian War Second Italo-Abyssiann War and after fighting in the Spanish Civil War would later become a spy in Prague before World War II. He and his wife were captured and tortured by the Gestapo and his experiences would later be published as The Valley of the Shadow Death Row. After his release in April 1945 from a Nazi prison he returned to London where as a portrait sculpture he executed busts of Ezra Pound Edmund Blunden John Cowper Powys Dylan Thomas Robert Graves and others. Scarce in original dustjacket. William Blackwood & Sons, Ltd., hardcover