Daily Telegraph Book of Obituaries

Twelve years since The Daily Telegraph Airmen's Obituaries Book Two was published, Air Commodore Graham Pitchfork has compiled eighty-five obituaries of outstanding aviators. With a focus on personnel from a range of air forces, including the RAF, USAF, RCAF, RNZAF and SAAF, there are a number of fascinating and distinguishable lives to read about. Those featured include MRAF Sir Michael Beetham, the longest-serving Chief of Air Staff in the RAF (apart from its founder Lord Trenchard), Brigadier General Paul Tibbets who commanded the USAAF bomber Enola Gay, which dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 and Wing Commander 'Dal' Russel, a highly decorated wartime Canadian fighter pilot, whose logbook recorded kills in the Battle of Britain and the Normandy invasion. There is also Lettice Curtis, the first woman qualified to fly a four-engine bomber and who by the end of the Second World War had flown over 400 heavy bombers, 150 Mosquitos and hundreds of Hurricanes and Spitfires as part of her role in the Air Transport Auxiliary. The book includes a foreword written by former Chief of Air Staff, Sir Richard Johns.

David Twiston Davies's latest, highly entertaining collection of 100 Daily Telegraph military obituaries from the last sixteen years includes those celebrated for their great heroism and involvement in major operations. Others have extraordinary stories barely remembered even by their families. Those featured include Private Harry Patch, the last survivor of those who went "over the top" on the Western Front in 1917; Lieutenant Colonel Eric Wilson of the Somaliland Camel Corps, who learned he had been awarded a posthumous VC in a prison camp; and Colonel Clive Fairweather, who organized the SAS attack on the terrorists who seized the Iranian embassy in London in 1980.