They Gave Me a Seafire

The Royal Navy was disparaging towards them and did not know how to use them. In encounter after encounter with the enemy, they had to fly aircraft which were often either inferior or unsuitable on `impossible' missions from carriers whose Fleet commanders did not understand —or even wish to know about — their problems or limitations. Yet they forged themselves into an elite whose prowess has only belatedly been acknowledged. They were the fighter pilots of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, irreverent of Naval tradition, customs or discipline, yet roaring off the flight decks of their unstable launching platforms (not knowing whether they would be able to find them again at the end of the mission) with incredible courage and elan to do battle with their German, Italian or Japanese counterparts over the oceans of the world.
`Mike' Crosley started training with the Fleet Air Arm on the very day of the battle of Taranto and went on to serve aboard HMS Eagle on the notorious Malta convoy run, shooting down his first two enemy aircraft — one of them a Ju 88, and this from a Sea Hurricane! — in two days. Surviving Eagle's sinking in August 1942, the author graduated to Seafires — the Naval equivalent of the Spitfire — and flew this beautiful but often troublesome aircraft in Combat Air Patrols and 'ramrod' strikes until the end of the war, by which time he had command of his own squadron.
From hilarious episodes during training and working up in the West Country and Scotland, through the Allied landings in north Africa during operation 'Torch' and an arctic convoy to Russia in which his carrier was so badly storm-damaged that it had to limp home with its flight deck virtually hanging loose from its hull, the author describes in vivid detail the experiences, the excitement and the terror of this type of flying.
He finished the war, still flying Seafires, aboard HMS Implacable as part of the `forgotten' British Pacific Fleet. He devised tactics for attacks on ground and naval targets which were so successful that they were not formally adopted by the Royal Navy until 14 years after the war's end, and which cut down pilot and aircraft losses so much that his Admiral complained the Seafires were not trying hard enough, despite their superb record of successes. Frank, often scathingly critical of 'Their Lordships' and others, side-splittingly funny one moment and desperately tragic the next, this is the true story of a young man thrown into a war which would first bring him together with his sweetheart and then separate them, which would bring comradeship, exhilaration and tragedy in almost equal amounts . . . Poignantly written, it is a book to rival the best yet on the 'Wavy Navy' and its insubordinate but highly successful fighter pilots.




by Commander R. "Mike" Crosley
Published by Airlife 1986 1st edition. 271pp illustrated, index, appendix. 15x23 bumped at top of spine, slightly yellowed, otherwise very good, 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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