“The Right of the Line,(The RAF in The European War 1939-45 )” by John Terraine
A tremendous, heart-warming story of the light blue. A masterful summary of operations and personnel, attitudes and heroism and duty at all levels. In it he argues cogently that the RAF took the traditional superior placing of “The Right of the Line”, because of its achievements and sacrifices in WW2. If you accept that then maybe you should also believe that the RAF should have taken over the position of Senior Service within the British Armed forces.
Sample quotefrom the final pages:
And what of the aircrew, the flyers, the ones who left their burnt bones scattered over all of Europe? In those young men we may discern the many faces of courage, the constitution of heroes: in lonely cockpits at dizzy altitudes, quartering the treacherous and limitless sea, searching the desert’s hostile glare, brushing the peaks of the high mountains, in the ferocity of low-level attack or the long, tense haul of a bombing mission, in fog, in deadly cold, in storm … on fire …in a prison camp… in a skin-grafting hospital … My title shows what I think of them: there is not prouder place, none deserving more honour, than the right of the line.
He does not neglect the groundcrew:
When we look below the ranks of the highest commanders, amid so much heroism, so much military virtue, it becomes invidious to start naming names. The overwhelming majority of the RAF’s million were to be found in the ground crew – that assembly of skilled, educated, individualistic, irreverent, dependable men without whose untiring labours the aircraft would not have flown, the operations would not have happened, the victory could never have been won, and this book would never have been written. The off-hand diffidence of their generation still caused many of them to brush aside their war service with comic or sardonic anecdotes, an attitude reflected in their scurrilous joyful songs , and summed up in what may almost be called the anthem of the “erks” – “Bless (or otherwise) ‘Em All”:
Many of them would rather die than admit to any pride in their part in what they liked to present as the most almighty F**k – Up from beginning to end. “Binding” every inch of the way, they made victory possible; they were splendid.