Years of Command

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{detailed description}The author of this autobiography served as a Commander-in-Chief without a break from the Battle of Britain to the end of the war. Succeeding Lord Dowding as C-in-C Fighter Command in the autumn of 194o, he moved two years later to the command of the R.A.F. in the Middle East, returning in 1944 to become C-in-C Coastal Command. A few months after the war he succeeded Field-Marshal Montgomery as C-in-C and Military Governor of the British Zone of Germany. It is a unique record.
In the reviews of his earlier book, Years of Combat, which described his experiences as a fighter pilot in the First War, Lord Douglas was widely praised for the authority, humanity and directness with which he told his story. Could there have been a better initial preparation for the posts he was to hold in the great struggle that was to follow? After a brief period as a civil airline pilot he rejoined the service and broadened and deepened his professional knowledge by a long spell as an instructor at the Imperial Defence College with such colleagues as Alan Brooke and Bertram Ramsay. By the outbreak of war his professional qualifications for high command were as outstanding as his personal abilities.
In telling his story he has been assisted by his old friend and wartime aide, Robert Wright, who was present at many of the memorable scenes here described. In these pages the great commanders of the Air Force, Portal, Dowding, Leigh-Mallory, Park, Harris, Tedder, and Slessor, are portrayed not only as the leaders of the R.A.F. at the most glorious period of its history but as human beings —and very remarkable ones. The generals, the admirals, and the political leaders with whom Lord Douglas worked, above all Sir Winston Churchill to whom the book is dedicated, are caught by the snapshot of a personal camera, not presented to the reader as studio portraits. Not the least arresting part of the book is the account given of post-war Germany and the Nuremberg trials where the story of two fighter pilots, Hermann Goering and Sholto Douglas, that had opened over the skies of the Western Front thirty years earlier reached its grim ending.
{Author / Publisher / Date}by Sholto Douglas
published by Collins 1966 1st edn. 382pp illustrated, index. 16x23
{condition}good in slightly torn d/j.
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