Goshawk Squadron (eBook)

Goshawk Squadron completes Derek Robinson's great trilogy of Royal Flying Corps novels. As one reviewer said: 'Robinson mixes action with cynicism and hard-bitten humour that has you halfway between tears and laughter' The story is sometimes funny because humour came easily to young men - and so did death. It's 1918, and Stanley Woolley, C.O. of Goshawk Squadron, sets about replacing their schoolboy notions of sport, fair play, chivalry in the sky, with his own belief: that there are only two kinds of fighter pilot: victims and murderers. Goshawk Squadron was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and is 'as convincing - and as splendidly incorrect politically - now as when it was first published.

---

World War One pilots were the knights of the sky, and the press and public idolised them as gallant young heroes. At just twenty-three, Major Stanley Woolley is the old man and commanding officer of Goshawk Squadron. He abhors any notion of chivalry in the clouds and is determined to obliterate the decent, gentlemanly outlook of his young, public school-educated pilots - for their own good. But as the war goes on he is forced to throw greener and greener pilots into the meat grinder. Goshawk Squadron finds its gallows humour and black camaraderie no defence against a Spandau bullet to the back of the head.