AeroModeller – June 2018

21

Cover to Cover

RAF WW2 Bombers before

“The Heavies”

TWO EXCELLENT AND INFORMATIVE, YET VERY DIFFERENT BOOKS ABOUT THE EARLY RAF WWII

BOMBING CAMPAIGN ARE REVIEWED BY CHRIS OTTEWELL.

Six Weeks of Blenheim

Summer

Authors

Air Commodore Alistair Panton

DFC, OBE, CB

Victoria Panton Bacon

Published by

Biteback Publishing

ISBN 978-1-84954-668-3

Price £16-99

Six Weeks of Blenheim Summer

This is an unusual and fascinating book. The main part is the war diary of Alistair Panton, his experiences in fl ying a

Blenheim bomber during and after the collapse of France in 1940. This makes it a very personal and “real” story which

for me throws light on a previously little explored area of RAF history.

Popular wisdom has it that the RAF left France at around the time of Dunkirk and only operated from UK soil from

then until D day. However, this book reveals that a few RAF aircraft were sent back and operated from Western France

after Dunkirk on reconnaissance missions. Even though Alistair was shot down four times in those six weeks, the

strength of the Blenheim airframe and the built-in armour, along with his obvious fl ying skills and a degree of good

fortune, saved him every time

Before this he had operated from eastern France until evacuated, supported the troops at Dunkirk from the UK – and

then been shot down and evacuated from Dunkirk, so seeing the whole thing from several diff erent perspectives.

In addition, the book includes some stories written by Alistair to illustrate his experiences as a POW along with

background and explanatory information provided by his Granddaughter and co-author, Victoria.

Highly recommended reading for anyone interested in this period.

Flying into the Storm – RAF

Bombers at War 1939-1942

Author

Chris Sams

Published by

Fonthill Media

ISBN 13:

978-1-78155-617-7

Price £20-00

Flying into the Storm – RAF Bombers at War 1939-1942

This is an excellent but conventional history book covering the RAF’s bomber missions in every theatre of war in the

1939 to 1942 period. Thus Europe, the Middle East, Malaya and Burma are all covered in remarkable detail for a 238

page book. By chance, it even quotes the report of being shot down for the last time in July 1940, provided by Alistair

Panton (see above) after his repatriation in 1945.

As well as covering a huge number of bombing and reconnaissance campaigns, including some which are hardly

known to the general public; the author fi nds room to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of each of the principle

bombers involved. He looked both at the operational results they obtained and the testimony of the crews assigned to

them.

Typically, they said that the Whitley was “slow and strong” but Charles Patterson was aghast at being assigned to a

Whitley Squadron describing the aircraft as “The slowest, dreariest, ugliest most ghastly aeroplane I had ever seen in

my life”. He called it a death-trap and sadly was proven right as he transferred to Blenheims and survived whereas not

one of friends from the OTU assigned to Whitleys did.

The Hampden was described by Leonard Barcham, “they weren’t very fast and not very manoeuvrable at all they

could only really operate off the Norwegian coast when there was good cloud cover.”

When Geoff rey Tuttle was asked about the good points of the Fairey Battle he said “not many” but he did qualify that

by pointing out that it was given an impossible task.

Finally the Blenheim was judged “quite a formidable bomber, if handled by an experienced crew”. However it had a

totally inadequate defensive armament.

From the scale aeromodeller’s point of view there are too few pictures, but the text does provide a wealth of ideas for

markings to research to make your next scale project from this period that bit diff erent.

Once again, two excellent books, both highly recommended.

BOOK REVIEWS 055.indd 45 26/04/2018 14:33