Sutton

1956 · 71376bd — Aldershot: Gale & Polden Ltd. 1956. First Edition. Royal octavo blue cloth hardcover gilt letters map illus. endpapers xi 181 pp. Very Good with speckling to edges; in a Very Good mylar protected dust jacket. From dust jacket: In his foreword Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir John Slessor G.C.B. D.S.O. M.C. who himself as a subaltern in the Royal Flying Corps flew the first operational sortie from Hornchurch in 1915 against a Zeppelin says “The book is more than a record of the fighting tradition of a famous R.A.F. base. The Story of Hornchurch is really the story of the Air Defence of London. The names of many of the men who fought from Hornchurch are household words in the R.A.F. today such as Sailor Malan Paddy Finucane Douglas Bader Brian Kingcombe Piet Hugo and Harry Broadhurst. But the story also pays tribute to those of an earlier generation such as Tempest and Sowrey Murlis Green and Armstrong -- great men in their day and brilliant pilots all who laid the foundation of a tradition on which the Luftwaffe broke in 1940. This book traces the development of fighter tactics right from the early days of Zeppelins and Gothas through the peace-time exercises to the developments of Radar and the highly organized system of the last war. The International and Empire aspects of the pilots who flew from Hornchurch are particularly brought out. The very large number of illustrations include many which have not been published before. Gale & Polden Ltd., 1956. First Edition. hardcover books