The Ship-Busters

The Story of the R.A.F. Torpedo-Bombers

by Ralph Barker

The Quality Book Club c1958, black and white photographic frontispiece, black and white photographic plates, hardcover, dustjacket (in pieces)

Very Good Condition, a little edge and shelf wear, a little rubbing and bumping to edges and corners, some discolouration, slight lean, previous owners’ details on front endpaper, foxing to endpapers; dustjacket missing front and part of spine, front wrap loose (see photographs)

“This book sets out to tell the story of the R.A.F. torpedo-bombers and of the men who flew them, from the early ‘rover’ attacks by single Beaufort’s off the Dutch and Norwegian coasts to the massed assaults of later years by the rocket and torpedo-carrying aircraft of the famous ‘strike-wings’.
The full stories of many historic actions are included: the lone moonlight attack by  22-year-old fight sergeant on the pocket-battleship Lutzow; the torpedoing of the Gneisenau I harbour at Brest, which put the battle-cruiser out of action for eight months at a critical stage of the war and for which Flying Officer Kenneth Campbell was posthumously awarded the V.C.; the escape of the Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and Prinz Eugen through the Channel, with the first detailed and personal account of the epic Swordfish attacks; and the series of strikes from Malta in the summer of 1942 against the Italian Fleet and against the supply shipping of the Afrika Korps, when every ship sunk had its repercussions on the land battle in Egypt, culminating in the sinking, on the eve of El Alamein and within sight of Tobruk harbour, of Rommel’s ‘last’ tanker.”