The Flying Shadow (Handheld World War 2 Classics, 6) - Softcover

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

John Llewelyn Rees (1911-1940) was a British author and Royal Air Force pilot who died in August 1940 during a training exercise during the Second World War, north of London. His widow, the novelist Jane Oliver (also published by Handheld) established the John Llewelyn Rhys Prize for young writers in 1942.

Daniel Kilburn is a Lecturer in Geography and the Built Environment at University College London, where his teaching and research spans urbanism, global mobilities and social research methodologies. He is a licensed private pilot with some experience with a range of aircraft types. He lives in Liverpool, UK.

Luke Seaber is a Senior Teaching Fellow in Modern European Culture at University College London. He is the author and editor of various works on British literature in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including (with Michael McCluskey) Aviation in the Literature and Culture of Interwar Britain (2020). He lives in London.

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For scores of miles there was no movement, nothing but the sunny emptiness of the sky and the hard, white floor of the clouds, the enormous silence pricked by the stutter of the engine. For the hundredth time the beauty of such a scene hooded his mind, the sense of overwhelming desolation intensifying his realization of individuality. Nothing in the world, he thought, was as lonely as this, no scene so static in beauty, so expansive in monotony.

‘Now the aircraft is completely stalled. When I move the stick about the cockpit, it has no effect upon ailerons and elevators, the sound of the wind in the wires has died away. To spin I pull the stick right back and apply full right rudder.’

As the nose of the aircraft swung sharply downwards the horizon heeled till it disappeared overhead, the whiteness of the clouds whirling up to meet them.

***

‘You look horribly worried, Robert,’ said Janet when the game was over.

‘Doesn’t he?’ murmured Mrs Hateling.

‘It’s probably about your landings,’ Janet went on.

‘She lands very nicely,’ Robert said.

‘M’m. I got them all this morning –’

‘Though some of them were wheel landings.’

‘Do they count as bad ones?’

‘They’re quite safe, but you have to do consistent tail-down landings for your ‘A’ licence.’

‘Well, all I’m worried about now is going solo.’

‘I wouldn’t worry about that if I were you,’ said Janet. ‘Going solo is like sex, there’s not so much in it as people would have one believe.’

‘There’s a dreadful smartness about you, Janet,’ said Robert, ‘that makes me thankful I belong to the last generation.’

‘But you don’t. You were a small boy when the War was on, weren’t you?’ He nodded, and the girl went on, ‘Then you belong to us!’

***

He was horribly frightened, very cool, very certain of himself. There was a causeway of railway sleepers running between two rows of half-built houses upon which a Gipsy Moth might conceivably be landed.

Without hesitation he slammed the Moth into a steep turn, pulling out as she stalled. Down went the nose again till the wires sang. He became aware of his pupil, who was screaming something about a crash and clutching the stick so that he had to use both hands to keep it forward.

He skid-slipped a few feet off and, ten seconds later he dropped the ’plane for a perfect landing, the tail-skid rattling on the uneven sleepers. The Moth bumped to rest, the airscrew within ten yards of a slovenly fence. As he swung himself to the ground he took a deep breath and let it out very slowly. The Moth was undamaged and his pupil had fainted.