The Eighth Passenger (Wordsworth Military Library)

When "The Eighth Passenger" was first published, it was acclaimed as one of the most remarkable first-hand accounts of combat flying in the Second World War. Over the years, the author has learned much, which for security reasons, he could not have known at the time of the book's first publication. This edition, while retaining the integrity of the original, uses this added knowledge to reappraise the events of those fearful years. Seven young men, brought together by chance, and almost literally from the four corners of the earth, wake up day after day fully aware that the odds on their seeing another sunrise are relentlessly shortening. This story of a bomber crew flying through darkness and flak over Hamburg, Essen, Cologne, Dresden and Berlin, and always accompanied by an eighth passenger - fear - makes compulsive reading. Of nearly 7,500 Lancaster bombers built, no fewer than 3,349 were lost in action - killing nearly half of the young men who flew with Bomber Command.