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Beaufighter Boys  By  cover art

Beaufighter Boys

By: Graham Pitchfork, ACM Sir David Cousins KCB AFC RAF [RTD] - foreword
Narrated by: Shawn Compton
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Publisher's summary

Researched many years ago by the author for a project which did not come to fruition, Beaufighter air and ground crew gave freely of their stories which ranged from complete memoirs to brief anecdotes.

Graham Pitchfork has built on these reminiscences to trace the roles of Beaufighter squadrons spread across all the theaters of World War Two operations. From home bases, through north-west Europe, North Africa, Malta, and the Mediterranean to the far Far East and south-west Pacific, the Beaufighter served far and wide as did the crews of the RAF, RAAF, SAAF, and New Zealand and Canadian squadrons. All are covered in this quite unique book to be savored by all those interested in the war in the air from 1939-1945.

©2019 Graham Pitchfork (P)2019 Tantor

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Not up to the 'Boys series

I think it's disingenuous to use the 'Boys series' name here as it has a very different format.

The Lightning Boys (etc.) series tells first-person stressful and humorous stories that go into detail and really let you feel that you are there. But this Beaufighter Boys book is very distant and gives only superficial accounts of combat, at best. For instance, it covers one navigator who fought in four combat theaters but rarely covers any encounter with passion; it's little more than a listing of the squadrons he served with and medals he earned. While impressive, I didn't really get any feeling for what his time in the cockpit was like.

The author seems compelled to list all medals each aviator earned, which is impressive but when we know little about the encounters that earned these medals, they don't mean as much as they should.

The narrator starts out like a computer-generated voice and clearly has no understanding of the material he is reading. He refers to a "zero point three zero three" machine gun... a what? Oh, you mean a three-oh-three? And encounters with the infamous Heinkel Three... the what? Oh good grief, you mean a Heinkel 111? No wonder he reads like a robot.

Overall, I'm disappointed that this book gave me only a superficial appreciation of what is was actually like to fly in these aircraft.

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4 people found this helpful