This is a gripping narrative of what it was like to serve and fight with
Bomber Command in World War 2 told by a participant in the struggle and
one which offers a very unusual personal perspective on the conflict.
Ron Smith was a rear gunner in a Lancaster who flew 65 operations,
flying firstly with 626 Squadron and later with 156 Pathfinder Squadron.
The writing is exceptionally powerful, involving the reader in the
events being described in a way that few World War II aviation memoirs
have achieved.
'Suddenly we were over the Big City... after long hours of searching the
night sky from the coast, to be suddenly propelled into the brilliant
hell over Berlin produced a freezing of the mind... flak sliced up
through the broken illuminated clouds, ascending gracefully to stream
past the turret. A Lancaster slid across at right angles with a single
fighter just behind it, as if attached by an invisible thread... the
city far below was bubbling and boiling, splashes of fire opening out as
the blockbusters pierced this terrible brew.'
He vividly recalls the fear and intensity of what it was like to be a
part of this epic struggle in the isolation of being cocooned in his
lonely gun turret.
