WINGS OF THE MORNING

This book is a history of the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm in World War II, and one which naval buffs will enjoy. The Fleet Air Arm was in pitiful shape at the beginning of the war, since responsibilities for aerial warfare had been ceded to the R.A.F. at the end of the First War. Little had been done in the interim to develop naval planes, because the importance of carrier-based planes was hardly guessed at. Nonetheless, the Fleet Air Arm proved indispensable in the Norwegian campaign, in the Mediterranean, in the North Atlantic. Very often they were flying obsolete planes, such as the versatile Swordfish, an ungainly looking single-engine biplane which was in service up to the end of the war. Photographs of the planes used in Fleet operations in this book bring home the rapidity of aircraft development with dramatic impact. It was the Fleet Air Arm which crippled the cruiser Bismarck enough to allow ships to close in for the kill. Without escort carriers, the Allies might never have turned the tide against the U-boats in the North Atlantic. It was also the Fleet Air Arm which perfected the system of night bombing with flares in the Western Desert campaign. Mr. Cameron is quite a polemicist for the Navy against the R.A.F. No doubt there is another side to the story, but that of the Navy is well presented in this book.