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A biography of an aviation archaeology pioneer who unearthed World War II plane wrecks and the stories they contained. As long ago as 1961, Terry Parsons, then still in his twenties, began his long search for lost aircraft and memories of the Battle of Britain and the Blitz. What he discovered over the decades that followed went far beyond the tangled wreckage of military aircraft, both fighters and bombers. For with each of the thousands of RAF and Luftwaffe artifacts he unearthed came life stories of the valiant and the brave, the living and the dead. Among the items he has recovered from the many wreck sites were a mud-cloaked control column from a Spitfire with its gun button still switc...
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This WWII biography recounts the heroic contributions of a female pilot who flew Spitfires, Hurricanes and Wellington Bombers for the RAF. A farmer’s daughter from Oxfordshire, Mary Ellis fell in love with flying at the age of eleven, when she rode in a biplane at a flying circus. Already a licensed pilot by the time the Second World War broke out, Mary joined the Air Transit Auxiliary in 1941. As a ferry pilot, she transported aircraft for the Royal Air Force, including more than four hundred Spitfires and seventy-six different kinds of aircraft. After the war, Mary accepted a secondment to the RAF as one of the first pilots to fly the new Gloster Meteor, Britain’s first fighter jet. By 1950, she became Europe's first female air commandant. In this authorized biography, Mary and biographer Melody Foreman vividly recount her action-packed career spanning almost a century of aviation. Mary says: I am passionate for anything fast and furious. I always have been since the age of three and I always knew I would fly. The day I stepped into a Spitfire was a complete joy and it was the most natural thing in the world for me.
A groundbreaking history of women in British intelligence, revealing their pivotal role across the first half of the twentieth century From the twentieth century onward, women took on an extraordinary range of roles in intelligence, defying the conventions of their time. Across both world wars, far from being a small part of covert operations, women ran spy networks and escape lines, parachuted behind enemy lines, and interrogated prisoners. And, back in Bletchley and Whitehall, women’s vital administrative work in MI offices kept the British war engine running. In this major, panoramic history, Helen Fry looks at the rich and varied work women undertook as civilians and in uniform. From spies in the Belgian network “La Dame Blanche,” knitting coded messages into jumpers, to those who interpreted aerial images and even ran entire sections, Fry shows just how crucial women were in the intelligence mission. Filled with hitherto unknown stories, Women in Intelligence places new research on record for the first time and showcases the inspirational contributions of these remarkable women.
These volumes represent the highest level of scholarship on what is arguably the most important tradition of Biblical Hebrew. Written by the leading scholar of the Tiberian Masoretic tradition, they offer a wealth of new data and revised analysis, and constitute a considerable advance on existing published scholarship. It should stand alongside Israel Yeivin’s ‘The Tiberian Masorah’ as an essential handbook for scholars of Biblical Hebrew, and will remain an indispensable reference work for decades to come. —Dr. Benjamin Outhwaite, Director of the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit, Cambridge University Library The form of Biblical Hebrew that is presented in printed editions, wi...
This is the first book to tell the story of the bebop subculture in London’s Soho, a subculture that emerged in 1945 and reached its pinnacle in 1950. In an exploration via the intersections of race, class and gender, it shows how bebop identities were constructed and articulated. Combining a wide range of archival research and theory, the book evocatively demonstrates how the scene evolved in Soho’s clubs, the fashion that formed around the music, drug usage amongst a contingent of the group, and the moral panic which led to the police raids on the clubs between 1947 and 1950. Thereafter it maps the changes in popular culture in Soho during the 1950s, and argues that the bebop story is an important precedent to the institutional harassment of black-related spaces and culture that continued in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This book therefore rewrites the first chapter of the ‘classic’ subcultural canon, and resets the subcultural clock; requiring us to rethink the periodization and social make-up of British post-war youth subcultures.
Enemy Sighted is the story of the world’s first integrated air defense system and how the coalition of Hurricanes and Spitfires, Fighter Command’s Operations Rooms and Sector Stations, Radar Stations, Observer Corps posts, anti-aircraft gun and searchlight batteries, and balloon barrages, stood resolutely in the way of Operation Seelöwe, Hitler’s plan for invading Britain in the Summer of 1940. Dilip Amin provides a fascinating insight into their development and eventual operationalization. The system provided a recognized air picture, giving everyone the same information at the same time, much like computers linked through the internet do today, except, in 1939 there was no computer ...
Pauline Gower was the leader of the Spitfire women during the Second World War. After gaining her pilot's licence at 20, she set up the first female joyriding business in 1931 with engineer Dorothy Spicer and took 33,000 passengers up for a whirl, clocking up more than 2,000 hours overall. Pauline went on to command the inaugural women's section of the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) and achieved equal pay for her women pilots. She enabled them to fly 'Anything to Anywhere', including Tiger Moths, Hurricanes, Wellingtons and – their firm favourite – the Spitfire. Pauline Gower: Pioneering Leader of the Spitfire Women is a story of bravery, fortitude and political persuasion. Pauline was a clear leader of her time and a true pioneer of flight. She died after giving birth, at only 36; a life cut tragically short, but one of significant achievements. Pauline left a huge legacy for women in aviation.