Aviation > Memoirs

Orphaned by the age of 10, Jim Turner was left without a permanent home, bouncing between living with family members in Upstate SC and Transylvania County, NC until he was drafted into the US Army in 1943. He originally volunteered to be a paratrooper but instead found himself on the way to Walker Air Field after graduating parachute rigging school - to join the “Battle of Kansas” in preparation for the new untested B-29 Superfortress. There he became a Hellbird. Then it was off to India, where Jim did triple duty as a parachute rigger, runway inspector and volunteer tail gunner. After surviving a crash in Burma during a mission and almost starving to death, Jim and the rest of the Hellb ...

Squadron Leader Jeff West's War Diaries 1941 - 1945 Casualties en masse, barmaids, mateship, alcoholism, culture shock, boredom, illness and a love of aviation… From flying in formation with Sir Douglas Bader, Sir Alan Smith, Air Vice Marshal Johnnie Johnson and Sir Hugh Dundas in the elite RAF Tangmere 616 squadron, running from exploding bombs as the Luftwaffe devastated Malta, to dealing with plane malfunctions and pilot error in the deserts of Sudan and Egypt. Suffering from dysentery one day and a hangover the next, Jeff delivers his escapades combining wit and heart throughout the glaring naive eyes of a young New Zealand pilot thrust into a life of adventure he could only dr ...