The Hurricats

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The Hurricats

Ref: 3450

Price: £11.50

'What have you done,' demanded Winston Churchill of his Chief of Naval Staff on 27 December 1940, 'about catapulting expendable aircraft from ships?' With the Battle of Britain won and lost, Hitler had abandoned his invasion plans and proclaimed that Britain would be bombed and starved into submission, and the process had already begun. In the war at sea he had introduced a new dimension in the shape of the long-range Focke-Wulf Condors of Kampfgeschwader 40, manned by an elite corps of German airmen who roamed far out into the Atlantic, beyond the range of Britain's shore-based fighters, to sink Allied ships almost at will. 'The scourge of the Atlantic,' Churchill called them, and demanded an antidote, however desperate.
Thus were born the expendable fighters, launched in mid-ocean by catapult from the foredecks of specially adapted merchant ships, to which they could not return. The machines used were mainly Hurricanes; their outstandingly courageous pilots were volunteers — RAF men, many of them veterans of the Battle of Britain, and members of the Fleet Air Arm. All these men knew that after a combat, if they ditched or baled out successfully, they stood a chance of being picked up by an escort vessel, but all were aware that, failing this, they had bought a one-way ticket.
The story of Britain's 'suicide' pilots, as they were inevitably known, pitted as they were against a brave and resourceful enemy, adds a new and thrilling chapter to the saga of human endeavour in World War II.

by Ralph Barker
BCA edition. 1978 207pp illustrated, maps, index, appendix. 14x22 fine, including d/j.

Note:
"Long" descriptions, where shown, may have been taken from the book's dust jacket notes, and as such are relevant to the date of publication (e.g. any references to "new edition" "previously unpublished photographs" etc.) and not the present.

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