[pdf] Voices in Flight: Raf Escapers And Evaders in Wwii

During the Second World War, 156 RAF men successfully escaped from German PoW camps in Western Europe. A further 1,975 men evaded capture after having been shot down over this same territory.

The Forgotten tells the story of the more than 10,000 Canadian servicemen, merchant mariners and civilians whose war ended in surrender, capture and imprisonment, through the eyes of a group of men in Hitler’s grasp: Private Stan Darch, who had already survived the cauldron of Dieppe; seventeen civilian priests and brothers captured at sea, one of whom risked his life to hide an escape tunnel after the Great Escape; Edward Carter-Edwards, who endured the hell of Buchenwald concentration camp; and RCAF Sergeant Ian MacDonald, who, having been on the run for six weeks after being shot down, was betrayed to the Gestapo and survived six weeks in the notorious Fresnes Prison in Paris.

This is a pulsating account of the young RAF fighter boys who flew Spitfires, Hurricanes and Defiants in England against the Luftwaffe and from Malta 1940-45 against the Regia Aeronautica.

'The Navy can lose us the war, but only the Air Force can win it. Therefore our supreme effort must be to gain overwhelming mastery in the air.

Of the 7,953 Bomber Command aircraft lost on night operations during the Second World War, an estimated 5,833 fell victim to Luftwaffe night fighters.