By Spitfire to India (el. knyga) (skaityta knyga) | Tony Hoskins | knygos.lt

Aprašymas

By Spitfire to India invites readers into the extraordinary true story of Sergeant Peter Rawlinson, a young RAF pilot dispatched in the spring of 1943 on a journey few would dare attempt even today. Tasked with flying alone from RAF Benson in Oxfordshire to 681 Photographic Reconnaissance Squadron in Calcutta, he must navigate his unarmed PR.IV Spitfire, appropriately christened Calamity Jane, across thousands of miles of hostile skies.

From the moment he leaves the safety of the Sergeants Mess, Rawlinson's journey becomes a battle against the elements and the war itself. High above Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, he contends with the numbing cold of a cockpit five miles up, crushing fatigue, and the constant fear of enemy attack or mechanical failure. As a recent graduate of the Empire Training Programme in the USA, he quickly discovers that no amount of preparation can dull the isolation of flying alone over vast oceans, deserts, and mountains.

As his journey takes him through Gibraltar, war-torn North Africa, and the turbulent Middle East, where an accident nearly ends his life, he encounters combatants of many nationalities, each struggling with their own hardships in a world engulfed by conflict. Obstacles arise at every turn: unreliable equipment, bureaucratic obstruction, and the unpredictable chaos of global war.

Through invention, grit, and more than a little luck, Rawlinson survives a two-month adventure spanning over 7,000 miles before he even begins his operational duties in India. He would go on to fly 45 unarmed reconnaissance sorties, returning again and again to the skies where survival depended solely on speed, altitude, and nerve. Rawlinson lived to tell his story. Calamity Jane did not. Lost to Japanese fire over Mandalay, the aircraft's final pilot was captured and publicly executed - a moral atrocity.

Compelling, meticulously researched, and deeply human, By Spitfire to India not only shines a light on the RAF's forgotten aerial intelligence war in the Far East, revealing the quiet heroism of the men of Nos. 681 and 684 squadrons, it invites readers to witness a journey unlike any other.