Action Stations Overseas

Ref: 5205

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sadly, flyingbooks is now closed.

{detailed description}The ten volumes of PSL's highly acclaimed and best-selling 'Action Stations' series cover all military airfields in Britain, and have become essential reference works for all military aviation enthusiasts and historians. Now the series is extended to embrace Britain's military air bases around the world. Sixty of the most prominent overseas stations are described here, stations which were engaged in numerous campaigns including not only the Second World War but also the North West Frontier, Palestine, the Berlin Airlift, the Suez Crisis, Cyprus, Aden, Kuwait, the Mau Mau Rebellion, the Malayan Emergency, the Borneo Confrontation and the Falklands conflict. From its earliest days, air power was seen as an effective means of policing the British Empire and protecting Britain's strategic interests overseas. In many cases, the numerous military campaigns in faraway places in which the RAF, together with the Fleet Air Arm and the Army Air Corps, became involved are now largely forgotten, and many of the bases no longer exist, or have been handed over to foreign control, thus passing into military history. But their grandeur and operational vitality is vividly portrayed here, bringing to light the enormous range of duties that the Services have been called upon to provide, and illustrating something of the magnificence and variety of the British Empire in its heyday. Some locations were exotic, offering their servicemen a great range of off-duty leisure activities; others were less convivial places, their hard-pressed personnel enduring extremes of climate and terrain and intensely difficult operating conditions, while at the same time upholding the services' traditions of valour and professionalism. The breadth of coverage and the illustrative support of Action Stations Overseas maintains the standard set by the previous volumes, together with their companion Britain's Military Airfields 1939-45. The son of an RAF pilot, Tony Fairbairn spent his early years travelling extensively at home and abroad, and joined the Service himself in 1966. His postings included overseas tours to such places as Cyprus, Gibraltar and the Falklands, where his interest in aviation journalism and photography helped him amass much of the information contained in this book, which was completed while he was based at RAF Wittering in Cambridgeshire.
{Author / Publisher / Date}by Sqdn Ldr Tony Fairbairn
published by PSL 1991 1st edn. 192pp profusely illustrated, index, 17x24
{condition}fine in price clipped d/j
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