B flight

by Richard Hough

In 1916 sixteen-year-old Will, bitterly disappointed at losing an important race for his school, lies about his age and joins the Royal Cadet Flying Corps as a cadet pilot and soon finds himself flying dangerous missions over war-torn Europe.

Genres: Historical Fiction

158 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

Richard Alexander Hough was a British author and historian specializing in naval history. As a child, he was obsessed with making model warships and collecting information about navies around the world. In 1941, he joined the Royal Air Force and trained at a flying school near Los Angeles. He flew Hurricanes and Typhoons and was wounded in action.

After World War II, Hough worked as a part-time delivery driver for a wine shop, while looking for employment involving books. He finally joined the publishing house Bodley Head, and then Hamish Hamilton, where he eventually headed the children’s book division.

His work as a publisher inspired him to turn to writing himself in 1950, and he went on to write more than ninety books over a long and successful career. Best-known for his works of naval history and his biographies, he also wrote war novels and books for children (under the pseudonym Bruce Carter), all of which sold in huge numbers around the world. His works include The Longest Battle: The War at Sea 1939-45, Naval Battles of the Twentieth Century and best-selling biographies of Earl Mountbatten of Burma and Captain James Cook. Captain Bligh and Mr Christian, his 1972 account of the mutiny on the Bounty, was the basis of the 1984 film The Bounty, starring Anthony Hopkins and Mel Gibson.

Hough was the official historian of the Mountbatten family and a longtime student of Churchill. Winston Churchill figures prominently in nine of his books, including Former Naval Person: Churchill and the Wars at Sea. He won the Daily Express Best Book of the Sea Award in 1972.

Reviews

[Malcolm · Rating 2 out of 5]

This novel is promoted in the blurb as a story about a boy who served in the Royal Flying Corps in World War One. For the persistent reader the novel does finally deliver on that promise. The bulk of the novel, however, is about our hero's attempt to win the local fell running championship. This is told well. The experience of fell running is competently communicated to the reader but I felt the novel should have reflected in its choice of title and its blurb that it was about fell running.
Finally will enlists and the experience of training to fly and then the account of his time in combat are well told so that the lucky and persistent reader will gain something for their effort. The horror, the sense of futility and the sheer weariness are all communicated to the reader. The pity is that it was so long coming.

[Tony · Rating 3 out of 5]

Re-read after a gap of nearly 40 years. It's lost none of its charm

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Based on memory of reading around 40 years ago!