MASTER BOMBER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 390, 13 December 1946, Page 17

MASTER BOMBER

ENEMY COAST AHEAD. By Wing-Com-mander Guy Gibson, V.C., D.S.O. Michael Joseph Ltd., London. ‘ VEN after six years of war, the literature of flying is still not extensive. Saggitarius Rising and Wind, Sand and Stars are the only pre-war titles which at this remove seem likely to’ endure, and since 1939 the scarcity of first-class writing has, with one or two exceptions, continued. Of these exceptions The Last Enemy, some of the shorter flights. of H. E. Bates, and now Enemy Coast Ahead are the most notable, The latter, written in 1944, published in February last, and now through its second printing, is the story of Bomber Command told autobiographically by one of: its most ‘distinguished pilots. From the nature of its subject it is therefore neither so personal a record as Hilary’s, nor. so philosophic as de Saint Exupéry’s. But if. it; does not soar beyond a middle flight, the casual diction and the unaffected simplicity of the stylethe complete absence of heroics:in a story of men to whom the capacity for sustained heroism was as essential as a clear eye and a steady hand-provide a picture which is as accurate in spirit as it is. in technical detail. The book begins with the war, and follows its varying fortunes in air up to the time when the Allies mounted the main day-and-night offensive against industrial: Germany. The climax of the story-is the account of the raid on the Mohne and Eder Dams in the Ruhr Valley, and the tension is built up faultlessly . toward . this tremendous climax. The chapters describing the preparations for this raid, the secrecy which surrounded’ the training and its unprecedented thoroughness (16 crews flew. 2,000 hours, dropped 2,500 practice bombs, and were able finally to pin-point a target from’ exactly 60ft. at a speed of exactly 232 miles an hour), are war history as well written as it is ever likely to be, and the account of the actual bombing of the dams is descriptive writing of a very high order. Enemy Coast Ahead, which has an introduction by~ Marshal of the Royal

Air Force, Sir Arthur Harris, is dedicated to 114 of the author’s comrades, almost all killed or presumed killed-a roll of honour filling three pages.’ To them this book is a fitting memorial, as it-is to the author, for he himself failed to return from a bombing mission: made not. long after his narrative Was completed.