They Gave Me a Seafire

Hardbound 16x24 cm, 268 pages. This book is a treasure trove of information about the Royal Navy air arm during WWII, an area that I previously knew very little about. The author covers his career from the very beginning until the end of the war and a year or so beyond. This gives the reader a thorough look at the training RN pilots went through and the ops they flew. It also covers the problems they had flying aircraft that weren't designed to operate off of aircraft carriers. And throughout it all is the authors dry and sarcastic sense of humor. This as much as anything else gives the reader a sense of how it must have been. But he also is very good at imparting the sense of loss that war brings, of young men and woman dying much too soon, and at times for such senseless reasons. It all makes this a great book for anyone interested in the subject. Sadly, Commander Crosley is no longer with us. I'm very thankful that while he was still here he took the time to memorialize his experiences and his thoughts from the war. We're losing our WWII veterans at an ever increasing rate now and within ten or fifteen years they'll probably all be gone. That makes books like this all the more important, to be able to hear how things really were from those who were there. 9781840372458