This is the definitive history of recreational flying in the East Midlands. From its inception, aeronautics was often used as a public spectacle and exploited financially. This book sets out to demonstrate that the East Midlands is truly representative of the progress of general aviation in England as a whole over two centuries. The history covers balloons for shows and sports, the pre-First World War period, women aviators, and Sir Alan Cobham up through private and small air taxi flying operations and Amy Johnson. This illustrated book enables the reader to feel the euphoria and frustrations of the flyers, and experience the same excitement as the people who actually witnessed their efforts.

Balloons, Bleriots and Barnstormers: 200 Years of Flying for Fun

Engineering & Transportation

Goodrum, Alastair

Transportation

Tempus

Danger and excitement, courage and selflessness, and gripping stories of life and death in the air: Lady Luck took these heady ingredients and mixed them into the lethal cocktail that is military flying in peace and war. From WWI biplanes to twenty-first-century fast jets, mid-air collisions and many other crashes, hundreds of airmen from all corners of the world left their mark—quite literally—on the landscape and collective memory of the East Midlands. This book ensures these airmen cease simply to be names carved on a cold memorial stone or entries in some dusty, long-forgotten documents. They come vividly alive again, with backgrounds and personalities and patriotic or duty reasons for being where they are when tragedy struck. Dying To Fly brings their courage and human-interest stories into the light of day, remembers them with respect and pays tribute to their passing.

Dying to Fly: The Human Cost of Military Flying: East Midlands

History

Europe

The History Press

How Lincolnshire schoolboys became combat airmen—the adventures of six brave young men in WWII.  What turns an ordinary man into an extraordinary one? The answer lies in these stories of teenage volunteers for wartime aircrew who exchanged their school uniforms for Air Force Blue and took a giant step into the unknown. It was a dangerous adventure, but one with a hugely tempting prospect: the opportunity to FLY. From the skies over Europe to jungles, deserts, and the waters of the Chinca sea, this collection of true tales describes these six men’s experiences of training for those coveted "wings."  The nervous excitement of that first sortie over enemy territory and flying into the hell of an enemy flak barrage and fighters is told from original research from flying log books, diaries, and family archives. Some of the brave characters revealed in this book get home safely but some are shot down and experienced hardship, adventures, and dangers that are the stuff of nightmares. Seventy years on, and these brushes with death are, by any measure, hair-raising adventures that turned adolescents into men, some of whom returned home safely while others paid the ultimate price.

They Spread Their Wings: Six Courageous Airmen in Combat in the Second World War

Biographies & Memoirs

Leaders & Notable People

The Flying Adventures of Charles Green: The Extraordinary Airman who Revolutionised 19th Century Aeronautics

Historical

Pen and Sword Aviation

School of Aces: The RAF Training School that Won the Battle of Britain

This is the fascinating true story behind one of the key reasons that RAF Fighter Command saw such success in the Second World War and emerged victorious from the Battle of Britain - the incredible training school that transformed young men from inexperienced pilots into some of the finest airmen in the world.From peacetime Armament Practice Camp, to fighter Operational Training Unit, to Central Gunnery School, this is the story of how, between 1926 and 1946, the RAF developed and implemented a world-beating training system. This allowed the RAF to have total faith in the men tasked with combatting the Nazi threat from the air, and School of Aces tells the astonishing story of the station through a wealth of individual stories - with famous names, drama, courage and pathos a-plenty - recalling how pilots, air gunners and ground crew came to be at RAF Sutton Bridge, what life was like for them there and what happened to them afterwards.Prior to and during the Battles of France and Britain, RAF Sutton Bridge played a vital role in the British success by creating, in a remarkably short time, an effective training programme for potential fighter pilots. It then turned out 494 Hurricane pilots with such rapidity that summer that no fewer than 390 graduates flew as part of that illustrious band of men known forever as 'The Few'.

Military

Amberley Publishing

This is the fascinating true story behind one of the key reasons that RAF Fighter Command saw such success in the Second World War and emerged victorious from the Battle of Britain – the incredible training school that transformed young men from inexperienced pilots into some of the finest airmen in the world.From peacetime Armament Practice Camp, to fighter Operational Training Unit, to Central Gunnery School, this is the story of how, between 1926 and 1946, the RAF developed and implemented a world-beating training system. This allowed the RAF to have total faith in the men tasked with combatting the Nazi threat from the air, and School of Aces tells the astonishing story of the station through a wealth of individual stories – with famous names, drama, courage and pathos a-plenty – recalling how pilots, air gunners and ground crew came to be at RAF Sutton Bridge, what life was like for them there and what happened to them afterwards.Prior to and during the Battles of France and Britain, RAF Sutton Bridge played a vital role in the British success by creating, in a remarkably short time, an effective training programme for potential fighter pilots. It then turned out 494 Hurricane pilots with such rapidity that summer that no fewer than 390 graduates flew as part of that illustrious band of men known forever as 'The Few'.

Night fighting in the air is a devious and clandestine form of mortal combat. In the blackness of night, success goes to the resolute hunter who stalks his prey unseen, and strikes from behind, swiftly and mercilessly. A sudden burst of machine-gun or cannon fire into an opponent’s belly often caught the enemy unprepared, obliterating men and machines in a hail of explosions. Chivalry had no place in the combats of the night sky. A corridor from The Wash to Birmingham was turned into a fierce battleground in two world wars. The air route from Germany and the occupied countries through this corridor, to targets right across the industrial heartland of England, became a three-dimensional combat zone that proved to be as grim a killing ground by night as anywhere else in the land. No Place for Chivalry encapsulates the story of the air defense of England against attack by night. By taking the area covered by RAF Wittering and Digby sectors, looking at the action of night fighter squadrons operating from those stations and their satellite airfields, the way the battle developed, its timeline of events, the events themselves and the organization of those involved, a coherent picture of how the night air defense of Britain evolved is formed. The narrative is pitched at a level of detail and with such human interest content that it enables readers not only to grasp what is happening and why but also to feel the tensions, frustrations and euphoria of success that the aircrews felt at the time. The reader gets a view from the cockpit or gun turret, to ‘meet’ and ‘fly’ with the men of both sides who fought in the air at night - men whose moral standards on the ground were above reproach but, when fighting in the night sky, gave no quarter.

No Place for Chivalry: RAF Night Fighters Defend the East of England Against the German Air Force in Two World Wars

Grub Street Publishing

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Goodrum, Alastair. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Goodrum, Alastair

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Goodrum, Alastair. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Balloons, Bleriots and Barnstormers: 200 Years of Flying for Fun

Dying to Fly: The Human Cost of Military Flying: East Midlands

They Spread Their Wings: Six Courageous Airmen in Combat in the Second World War

The Flying Adventures of Charles Green: The Extraordinary Airman who Revolutionised 19th Century Aeronautics

School of Aces: The RAF Training School that Won the Battle of Britain

School of Aces: The RAF Training School that Won the Battle of Britain

No Place for Chivalry: RAF Night Fighters Defend the East of England Against the German Air Force in Two World Wars