Mosquito Men: The Elite Pathfinders of 627 Squadron

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A warm, unsentimental and beautifully-observed book for our times' Lucy Caldwell, author of These Days 'If I were in bother I'd want the Ballybrady bunch at my back. For those fans of the Mosquito aircraft recently described by Rowland White, Mosquito Men will add the human element to this iconic plane. Many aviation history books concentrate only on the aircraft but this book describes the interaction between the politics, strategy and technology of the Allied bombing campaign, to put the Pathfinder operations in perspective.

This may only be a history of a short lived squadron at first glance but the background that is uncovered of the people, places, machines, politics and history make this an unmissable treat and a fitting testimony to those who we owe so much to. The book also deviated into the personal lives of the Pilots and Navigators, which was not material to the history.Its more familiar name was the de Havilland Mosquito, and it used lightning speed and agility to inflict mayhem on the German war machine. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. When Grace saves his life in a kayaking accident - if it was an accident - and Evan's troubled son arrives to stay, all three are drawn together in a way that forces a reckoning with their personal traumas and draws them back into society. Mosquito Men traces the contrasting careers of the young men of 627 Squadron, including that of Ken Oatley – last surviving member of an illustrious group – who flew twenty-two operations in Mosquitos as a navigator. I was hoping for something more like Michael Cumming's excellent "Beam Bombers" about 109 Squadron, As a result, I was sometimes distracted by anecdotes that I felt were non-sequiturs (and why I did not rate this 5 stars).

The Founder of the Pathfinders [Donald Bennett] lacks sufficient coverage, but the politics with Cochrane are well articulated. She hasn't left the village since a traumatic stay in London as a young woman at the end of the 1980s. She fills her days with swimming, fishing, quilting, and baiting the tourists who arrive from the city with more money than sense. The author does a nice job of expounding on the power struggle between 5 Group and 8 Group (PFF) that resulted in 627 Squadron moving to Woodhall Spa and 5 Group. The men who flew it nicknamed this most flexible of aircraft 'the wooden wonder' for its composite wooden frame and superb performance.The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.