The Flyer: British Culture and the Royal Air Force, 1939-1945

by Martin Francis

Between 1939 and 1945, the British public was spellbound by the martial endeavors and dashing style of the young men of the RAF, especially those with silvery fabric wings sewn above the breast pocket of their glamorous slate-blue uniform. Martin Francis provides the first scholarly study of the place of "the flyer" in British culture during the Second World War. Examining the lives of RAF personnel, and their popular representation in literary and cinematic texts, he illuminates broader issues of gender, social class, national and racial identities, emotional life, and the creation of a national myth in twentieth-century Britain. In particular, Francis argues that the flyer's relationship to fear, aggression, loss of his comrades, bodily dismemberment, and psychological breakdown reveals broader ambiguities surrounding the dominant understandings of masculinity in the middle decades of the century.

Despite his star appeal, cultural representations of the flyer encompassed both the gentle, chivalrous warrior and the uncompromising agent of destruction. Paying particular attention to the romantic universe of wartime aircrew, Francis reveals the extraordinary contrasts of their daily dicing with death in the sky one moment, before sitting down to lunch with wives and children in the next. Male and female experiences during the war were not polarized and antithetical, but were complementary and interrelated, a conclusion which has implications for the history of gender in modern Britain that reach well beyond either the specialized military culture of the wartime RAF or the chronological parameters of the Second World War.

Genres: History, Aviation, Nonfiction

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Adrienne · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 2004, I visited England on a study abroad trip. I came back with postcards, a Cambridge University sweatshirt, lots of memories, and a CD from the Imperial War Museum called "Reach for the Sky: Music Evocative of the War in the Air." The CD contained 20 some tracks including popular songs about the fighter pilots in the RAF during the Battle of Britain, marches played by RAF regimental bands, and a few clips of Sir Winston Churchill's famous remarks after the conclusion of the Battle of Britian. It's an interesting CD, and one that I listend to exclusively while reading The Flyer: British Culture and the Royal Air Force 1939-1945
I'm not the only one who is interested in WWII-era RAF pilots. Francis' study of the men of the Royal Air Force is concerned with how regular Britons saw the pilots during the war and after it. He also explores what life was actually like for the pilots in terms of their sense of comradeship with their fellows, their romantic and domestic interactions with women, how they coped with fear and stress, and how they dealt with the end of the war and the return to a normal life. Along the way, Francis cites the many books, plays and movies made about RAF pilots during and after the war, and analyses whether these representations are accurate and reflect the true experiences of the flyers (for the most part, they do).
All in all, Francis' book is an interesting one. It is also a very scholarly analysis, which made it a little difficult to get through, but I am glad that I finished it!