Aviation based fiction

In April 1917 the average lifespan of a British pilot posted to the Western Front is measured in days.

Eddie Grenville is 19, young, keen, idealistic. He hero worships his brother Percy, follows him into the RFC.

Then he finds that Percy has committed a war crime...

Eleven Days looks at how war changes people. Set against the events of Bloody April, it drops the reader into the most dangerous part of the first global war.

It's a foul night in late October 1916.

You're alone, in the cockpit of a frail, unreliable biplane, chasing a Leviathan in the darkness. A Zeppelin, somewhere out there in the night, sent to attack your country.

You're cold, frightened, with nothing but your own thoughts and memories for company.

And you're 20 years old.

On a bitter night in January 1944 one last RAF bomber struggles on to the target alone with one engine out and its crew terrified, driven on by its burned-out pilot who needs one last mission to complete his tour.
And all of them know that if they fail the RAF has the sanction of declaring them to be 'Lacking Moral Fibre'... essentially cowards.

Churchill tasked the SOE to set Europe ablaze - but it was the RAF who got them there.
It was the start of the Allies way back into Europe that led to D-Day.
For one burned out pilot who had been judged to be 'Lacking Moral Fibre' it was his own way back...

They said Dag gave everything for the war—a fearless bomber pilot who pushed past fear and exhaustion, sacrificing his rank, his reputation, and finally, on D-Day, his life. At least, that's what the RAF records claim.

It's a story people know. Germany, facing overwhelming odds in the skies by enemies out producing them in machinery and pilots, turn to technology to try to turn the tide.
But this is not 1945. It's 1918. It produced Black September for the British, Americans and French with higher losses than Bloody April.
And what if you fly one of these wonder machines and your cousin flies against you in one of the near obsolete aircraft? And he is with the girl you love? Would you betray your country's secrets for him - or rather her?

This series of fiction and nonfiction pieces is a little bit of an indulgence. It is, in many ways, both a love letter from a fan and my own small contribution to righting a wrong. It is centred full square on a machine, the Hawker Hurricane.