Thanks to a broken leg during flight school, Arthur Stanley Gould Lee gained valuable additional time flying trainers before he was posted to France during World War I. In November 1917 during low level bombing and strafing attacks, he was shot down three times by ground fire. He spent eight months at the front and accumulated 222 hours of flight time in Sopwith Pups and Camels during a staggering 118 patrols; being engaged in combat 56 times. He lived to retire from the RAF as an air vice-marshal in 1946. Author of three books, this is by far his best. Lee puts you in the cockpit in a riveting account of life as a fighter pilot at the front. At turns humorous and dramatic, this thoughtful, enlightening, true account is a classic to be ranked with Winged Victory by W. V. Yeates, also published by Grub Street.

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Gould Lee, Arthur

Biographies & Memoirs

Grub Street Publishing

Collects letters written by a young pilot with the Royal Flying Corps during the First World War to his wife that convey the immediacy of air fighting and address issues that include why the British did not use parachutes.

No Parachute: A Classic Account of War in the Air in WWI

Leaders & Notable People

Thanks to a broken leg during flight school, Arthur Stanley Gould Lee gained valuable additional time flying trainers before he was posted to France during World War I. In November 1917 during low-level bombing and strafing attacks, he was shot down three times by ground fire. He spent eight months at the front and accumulated 222 hours of flight time in Sopwith Pups and Camels during a staggering 118 patrols; being engaged in combat fifty-six times. He lived to retire from the RAF as an air vice-marshal in 1946. Author of three war books, this is by far his best. Lee puts you in the cockpit in a riveting account of life as a fighter pilot at the front. At turns humorous and dramatic, this thoughtful, enlightening, true account is a classic to be ranked with Winged Victory by V. M. Yeates, also published by Grub Street.

History

Military

From the young airmen who took their frail machines high above the trenches of World War I and fought their foes in single combat there emerged a renowned company of brilliant aces – among them Ball, Bishop, McCudden, Collishaw and Mannock – whose legendary feats have echoed down half a century. But behind the elite there were, in the Royal Flying Corps, many hundreds of other airmen who flew their hazardous daily sorties in outdated planes without ever achieving fame. Here is the story of one of these unknown flyers – a story based on letters written on the day, hot on the event, which tells of a young pilot’s progress from fledgling to seasoned fighter. His descriptions of air fighting, sometimes against the Richtofen Circus, of breathless dogfights between Sopwith Pup and Albatros, are among the most vivid and immediate to come out of World War I. Gould Lee brilliantly conveys the immediacy of air war, the thrills and the terror, in this honest and timeless account. Rising to the rank of air vice-marshal, Gould Lee never forgot the RFC’s needless sacrifices – and in a trio of trenchant appendices he examines, with the mature judgment of a senior officer of the RAF and a graduate of the Staff and Imperial Defense Colleges, the failure of the Army High Command to provide both efficient airplanes until mid-1917 and parachutes throughout the war, and General Trenchard’s persistence in a costly and largely ineffective conception of the air offensive.

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

Books by Gould Lee, Arthur

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

Open Cockpit

No Parachute: A Classic Account of War in the Air in WWI

Open Cockpit

No Parachute: A Classic Account of War in the Air in WWI