- Draws on Bomber Command’s operational records and numerous first-hand accounts of squadron and station personnel
- Serves as a reminder of the extraordinary feats to which so many individuals raised themselves, and their indelible sacrifice
- Written by a senior officer based at RAF Coningsby and a member of the 617 Squadron Association
- RAF Coningsby is the celebrated home of the Typhoon Force and the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, and one of few wartime stations that remains operational
RAF Coningsby played an integral part in the Allied strategic bombing campaign of the Second World War, and paid a heavy price for it. Operations between March 1941 and May 1945 cost the lives of 1,096 Coningsby airmen, whose average age was twenty-one. Inadequate aircraft and difficulties in target identification plagued operations in the early years, culminating in 617 Squadron’s disastrous attack on the Dortmund-Ems Canal in September 1943. The subsequent introduction of a Pathfinder Force within No. 5 Group defined all operations from D-Day onwards, and raids continued out of Coningsby right up to the armistice.
| BOOK ISBN |
9781781559185 |
| FORMAT |
234 x 156 mm |
| BINDING |
Hardback |
| PAGES |
528 pages |
| PUBLICATION DATE |
August 2024 |
| TERRITORY |
World |
| ILLUSTRATIONS |
34 illustrations |
Robert Perry was born in Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent, and educated at Bedford Modern School. He studied mechanical engineering at Brunel University, joining British Aerospace as a flight test engineer in 1995, working on Typhoon development. Commissioned as an engineer officer in the Royal Air Force in 2005, he has undertaken tours at Coningsby, in Scotland, and the Falkland Islands, and has served operationally in Afghanistan on 617 Squadron. In 2019 he was appointed the senior engineer officer of 12 Squadron with a mandate to reform the unit for Typhoon operations..
