Quoted by Peter Townsend in the 2015 book The Few: Fight for the Skies. Letter to his parents from hospital, after his Hurricane was set alight in combat with Me109’s during the Battle of Britian. I go forth into battle light of heart … I regard it as a privilege to fight for all those things that make life worth living-freedom, honour and fair play … Flying has meant the companionship of men, the intoxication of speed, the rush of air and the pulsating beat of the motor awaken some answering chord deep down which is indescribable. Wavell, British Army, in his 1936 book Generalship, its Diseases and their Cure. The more mechanical become the weapons with which weįight, the less mechanical must be the spirit which controls them.įield Marshal Archibald P. Eventually published as the 1993 book Lower Than Angels: A Memoir of War & Peace Written to be privately published in 1929. Windstaff, the publishing pseudonym of a wealthy American pilot flying with the British RFC in WWI. Yes, it was very romantic flying, people said later, like a knight errant in the clean blue sky of personal combat, in whipcord breeches and a British tunic with long Bond-Street-cut tails. I vomited brandy and milk and bile all over my instrument panel. I scooted for our lines, sticky with fear. They recall the old legends of chivalry, not merely by the daring of individual exploits, but by the nobility of their spirit and amongst the multitudes of heroes, we must continuously thank the cavalry of the airĭavid Lloyd George, British Prime Minister, speech to the House of Commons in movement of a motion of thanks to the armed services, 29 October 1917. They are the knight errants of this war, without fear and without reproach. Every flight is romance, every record is an epic. They scatter infantry on the march, they destroy convoys, the scatter dismay. They skim like armed swallows along the front, taking in their flights men armed with rifle and machine gun. They fight the foe high up and they fight low down. They are struggling there by day, yea and by night in that titanic conflict between the great foes of light and of darkness. High above the squalor and the mud, so high in the firmament that they are not visible from earth, they fight out the eternal issues of right and wrong. Will face alone the missiles and the flak and the small-arms fire over the I do everything myself, from engine start to engine shutdown. The solitude of a long cross-country flight. There is no space alottedįor another pilot to tune the radios in the weather or make the calls toĪir traffic control centers or to help with the emergency procedures or toĬall off the airspeed down final approach. One seat in the cockpit of a fighter airplane.

I belong to a group of men who fly alone. Very breath, you carried into the chilled vacuum, in a steel bottle. The canopy ground shut and sealed you off. You slipped into the hollow cockpit and strapped and plugged yourself into Somehow, despite everything, that word had not become sterile. You lived and died alone, especially in fighters.įighters. He was the highest scoring Western Allied fighter ace against the German Luftwaffe, making him one of the hunters. 'Johnnie' Johnson, RAF, regards fighter pilots. They fall into two broad categories those who are going out to shoot and those who secretly and desperately know they will be shot at, the hunters and the hunted.Īir Vice-Marshal J. Up there the world is divided into bastards and suckers. René Chambe, Au Temps des Carabines, 1955. On the ground and on the seas, by killing each other. Men were going to die in the air as they had died for centuries Group Captain Leonard Cheshire, in his book Bomber Pilot, 1943. In other words, flying must be subconscious. Smooth landings do not affect the success of an operation it is finding the right way to the right place that matters. Flying in itself is wholly unpredominant: to have a perfect pair of hands is important, but it is only a question of degree, not the end-all and be-all. Cited in 2008 book Mannock: The Life and Death of Major Edward Mannock VC, DSO, MC, RAF.įirst and foremost I had to learn to fly learn, and then cast the thought of flying away into the background. Attributed to Major Edward 'Mick' Mannock, RAF, ranking British fighter ace of WWI, credited with 61 victories.

Ww2 air combat maneuvers