UK

041676 - SCRAMBLE! TOM NEIL: The Dramatic Story of a Young Fighter Pilot's Experiences During The Battle of Britain & The Siege of Malta (New Paperback Edition!)

By Tom Neil.  Introduction by James Holland

By 1940 the Allies had fallen behind the Axis powers in parachute design and research. Other than as a means of escape from a doomed aircraft, the British regarded parachuting as of little military value. All that changed when the Germans used paratroops, the Fallschirmjäger, to devastating effect in the invasion of the Low Countries, and Churchill demanded immediate action. The call went out for men who would be prepared to risk their lives testing parachutes, jumping and landing techniques.

Charles Agate was a 34-year-old schoolteacher with a taste for adventure when he joined a pioneering group of mavericks at RAF Ringway in Manchester. The breath-taking risks they took alongside the essential work of the women of the WAAF changed the course of the war and the face of airborne warfare. Their work though often came at a terrible cost.

This is a fighter pilot’s memoir of four tumultuous years, 1938–1942, when he was first trained, then fought and survived in not one but two of the biggest aerial campaigns of the war, the Battle of Britain and the equally epic but lesser-known Siege of Malta.

When the Germans were blitzing their way across France in spring 1940, Pilot Officer Tom Neil had just received his first posting – to 249 Squadron. Nineteen years old and fresh from training, he was soon to be pitched into the maelstrom of air fighting on which the very survival of Britain would come to depend. By the end of the year he had shot down thirteen enemy aircraft, seen many of his friends killed, injured or burned, and was himself a wary and accomplished fighter pilot.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire, Tom was then shipped off to the beleaguered island of Malta to face a second Luftwaffe onslaught. Again heavily engaged, he shot down another enemy fighter and survived a number of engine failures and other emergencies.

When he passed away in 2018, he was one of the last living Battle of Britain veterans. This vivid memoir is his last word on his fighter pilot experiences