Enemy Coast Ahead

Prior to World War Two, Wing Commander Guy Gibson joined the Royal Air Force. In 1944, he wrote down his experience of serving in the RAF. Aged just 25, Gibson had completed two full tours, each of 30 operations, with Bomber Command, and had led the now-famous Dam Busters raid against the dams of the Ruhr Valley in May 1943. He died aged 26 in 1944, when his Mosquito crashed near Steenbergen in the Netherlands. Gibson’s story is an incredible one. He struggled daily to work the Handley Page Hampden, and then the Avro Manchester, flying both into enemy airspace with great difficulty. He goes into detail on this, describing the troubles facing him, and how he managed to overcome them. He also addresses the rapid professionalisation of the Bomber Command. At the start of the war, they seemed ill-equipped and unprepared to confront Germany, but they grew in confidence and stature, to represent one of the defining units of the Second World War. Gibson recounts this change.