Osprey Publishing Home
- Home
- OSPREY PUBLISHING
- Series
- General Aviation
- No Ordinary Pilot
No Ordinary Pilot
One young man’s extraordinary exploits in World War II
No Ordinary Pilot
One young man’s extraordinary exploits in World War II
You must sign in to add this item to your wishlist. Please sign in or create an account
Description
The compelling, previously unknown story of the wartime adventures of Bob Allen: pilot, aerial photographer and prisoner of war.
After a lifetime in the RAF, Group Captain Bob Allen, finally allowed his children and grandchildren to see his official flying log. It contained the line: 'KILLED WHILST ON OPERATIONS'. He refused to answer any further questions, leaving instead a memoir of his life during World War II.
Joining up aged 19, within six months he was in No.1 Squadron flying a Hurricane in a dog fight over the Channel. For almost two years he lived in West Africa, fighting Germany's Vichy French allies, as well as protecting the Southern Atlantic supply routes. Returning home at Christmas 1942, he retrained as a fighter-bomber pilot flying Typhoons and was one of the first over the Normandy beaches on D-Day.
On 25 July 1944 Bob was shot down, spending the rest of the war in a POW camp where he was held in solitary confinement, interrogated by the Gestapo and imprisoned in the infamous Stalag Luft 3 and suffered the winter march of 1945 before being liberated by the Russians.
Fleshing out Bob's careful third-person memoir with detailed research, his daughter Suzanne Campbell Jones tells the gripping story of a more or less ordinary man, who came home with extraordinary memories which he kept to himself for more than 50 years.
Table of Contents
Prologue
1 Head in the air
2 Overseas
3 At war in West Africa
4 Eyes in the sky
5 This island home
6 Summer in France
7 Behind the lines
8 A prisoner in Germany
9 'Raus raus' – 'out out'
10 Last lap to freedom
Postscript: What happened next
Notes
Select bibliography
Acknowledgements
Index
Product details
Published | 09 Mar 2018 |
---|---|
Format | Ebook (Epub & Mobi) |
Edition | 1st |
Extent | 320 |
ISBN | 9781472828286 |
Imprint | Osprey Publishing |
Illustrations | 20 black and white photographs and maps |
Series | General Aviation |
Short code | GNA |
Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
About the contributors

Resources
Book Vote
Tell us what titles you would like to see published by Osprey, then vote for your favourites in our monthly book vote!