Wings over the Waves

The Fleet Air Arm is one of those services that never really gets the attention it deserves and here we have a biography one of its most accomplished pilots, Lieutenant Commander Roy Sydney Baker-Faulkner. BF, as he was known, had an enviable wartime record. He took part in over 100 ops against Axis forces, including the raid on Taranto, searching for the Graf Spee, defending the sky over the beaches at Dunkirk, fighting in the Battle of Britain (one of the few naval pilots to do so), and leading an attack on the Tirpitz. The book is absolutely packed with Roy’s diary entries, as well as those of his close colleagues, illuminating what it was like to fly and fight in the Swordfish and other aircraft. With a tightly knit narrative the whole thing rattles along until BF’s war came to a tragic conclusion. Gripping.

• Pen and Sword: Aviation
• ISBN 978-1-8488-4305-9
• 392 pages. Hardback. £25

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