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Chasing After Danger : A Combat Pilot's War Over Europe and the Far East, 1939-42
This is a war memoir based on notebooks kept at the time which begins by describing the author's efforts to get into the war from the Solomon Islands. Pilot training in England was followed by night-bombing of the German warships in Brest. Terence O'Brien was one of the few pilots who completed the tally of sorties after which pilots were taken off operational flying. Anxious to return to fighting, O'Brien obtained a transfer to the Pacific where he describes his flying experiences from a jungle base in the Dutch East Indies. Other books by Terence O'Brien include "Out of the A Pilot with the Chindits" and "The Moonlight War".
264 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1990
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April 7, 2008
Excellent war time memoir
I am enjoying Terence O'Brian's book Chasing after danger, his wartime memoirs as a pilot.
I had not realized the role of the humble barrage balloon. It cut down ten per cent of all enemy aircraft. It was the weight of the cable and the balloon that severed the wing. They were always escaping, and the author for a time had the job of rounding up the strays. They could be carried by five men, when rolled up making a sausage seventy feet long. They could be carried through a house and frequently had to be as they were always landing in some one's back garden. They could kill if the hydrogen gas exploded there was a down blast. During one terrible raid on London, 87 were lost and thirty people died through them exploding.
I liked the poem on the front piece:
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds – and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of – wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sun lit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft thro' footless halls of air
Up, up the long delicious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, nor even eagle flew -
And while the silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God
John Gillespie Magee,
born 1922, killed in air combat 1941
I am enjoying Terence O'Brian's book Chasing after danger, his wartime memoirs as a pilot.
I had not realized the role of the humble barrage balloon. It cut down ten per cent of all enemy aircraft. It was the weight of the cable and the balloon that severed the wing. They were always escaping, and the author for a time had the job of rounding up the strays. They could be carried by five men, when rolled up making a sausage seventy feet long. They could be carried through a house and frequently had to be as they were always landing in some one's back garden. They could kill if the hydrogen gas exploded there was a down blast. During one terrible raid on London, 87 were lost and thirty people died through them exploding.
I liked the poem on the front piece:
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds – and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of – wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sun lit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft thro' footless halls of air
Up, up the long delicious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, nor even eagle flew -
And while the silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God
John Gillespie Magee,
born 1922, killed in air combat 1941
Displaying 1 of 1 review