Another review of Australian Eagles

Another review of Australian Eagles! The most recent edition of Sabretache. The Journal and Proceedings of the Military Historical Society of Australia has been published (Vol LIV No 2, June 2013) and it includes Peter Ingman's review of Australian Eagles. Peter has homed in on two aspects of my particular style of aviation writing: that I favour a personal, biographical approach rather than a technical treatise on battle and materiel; and that I eschew the 'faction' of cockpit action. I have reprinted a large chunk of the review here.

 

Australian Eagles comprises the stories of six Australian fighter pilots who fought in the Battle of Britain. There are no lengthy dissertations on the rise of National Socialism or the design history of the Spitfire; Alexander gets straight down to business after a brief reminder of the importance of the Battle of Britain, including Churchill’s famous words, ‘Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilisation...’. So it was that an extraordinary weight was placed on the shoulders of ‘The Few’—generally young men barely out of school.

The Australian pilots in the Battle of Britain were indeed just a few (around 30—the number varies depending on your definition of ‘Australian’) among ‘The Few’. These men had joined the air force during peacetime so their stories immediately differ from the typical WWII pilot biography. Some trained at Point Cook but then joined the RAF in short service commissions—so there was a cadre of Australian fighter pilots flying years before the first fighter squadron would be formed in Australia.

This book is about the less celebrated pilots. ... Four of these pilots were killed in 1940, although there were still another five hard years of war ahead—five years of significant events that would further obscure this period. It is touching to see how these men are remembered today—particularly by their school communities, but also by others. Only the most passionate of researchers would explore these relatively brief stories to find something about the nature and character of these men—and Alexander does just that. Underlining these difficulties, there is an ‘interlude’ describing the dearth of records concerning one of the pilots, Dick Glyde, who is barely remembered in squadron records and even excluded from certain accounts.

Alexander has her own style as an aviation writer. She does not try and put the reader in the cockpit, nor are actions embellished with detail that can only have been assumed. This is a difficulty for aviation writers: often complex events are accounted for very tersely in squadron records or logbooks. It is easy, then, to borrow from the experiences of others and in doing so overshadow the primary character concerned. Alexander does not go down that path. In fact by focusing on some relatively brief careers she gives her subjects a certain humility—and as a result treats them with due reverence.

For this reason the book is in many ways a refreshing angle on this subject. It reminds us that there is more to fighter pilots than just their tally count. In particular, all of those who lost their lives leave behind a rich legacy in their communities and family which lives on to the present day.

 

Alexander Fax Bookseller's display of Australian Eagles