Bomber

Product Information

A ‘must’ for the legions of Len Deighton fans, this edition of Bomber from Grove Press is highly recommended for personal and community library World War II fiction collections. Deep in detail, the plot follows the planning, execution and conclusion of a bombing raid during World War Two. Told through the eyes of ordinary people in the air and on the ground - from a young pilot to the inhabitants of a small town in the Ruhr - Bomber is an unforgettable portrayal of individuals caught up in the wreckage of war. And Vera Brittain’s point was that the people of England acquiesced to his decision because they did not have the imagination to appreciate what those deadly bombing campaigns meant to those on the ground.

Although he has written scores of novels, history and military history, and many cookbooks, Deighton is probably best known for the ten books about MI6 intelligence officer Bernard Samson. Known to us, their actions impact each other anonymously, showing how war could be both personal and impersonal at the same time.There is a lot of technical detail, and if I have one criticism it is that it seems a little bit leaden in the middle of the multiple plot lines. It’s a hugely ambitious novel…Each of the points of the narrative throws up subplots, in terms of wives, kids, mistresses, and emotional complications.

The result is a book that favors neither side but instead focuses on the individual humanity of the characters, with all their strengths and weaknesses.Despite the attack completely missing its industrial target no one is punished for the failure, but Himmel and Lambert are executed and demoted, respectively, for non-combat reasons. The British strategy to send hundreds of planes, night after night, to bomb the civilian areas of German cities was based on the decisions of Arthur Harris, head of the RAF Bomber Command. Willi Reinecke, Bach’s second in command, and lastly, Hansil, a German boy in the small market town of Altgarten. Long before this, another HE shell passed through the elevator hinge-bracket on the tail and blew part of the servo trim tab assembly into the rear turret with such force that it decapitated the rear gunner.

On the other hand, the experience and reaction of ordinary townspeople to being bombed by seven hundred aircraft will surely never again be portrayed in all of its forensic horror like Deighton has done here. Half of a canister of incendiaries jettisoned by Munro’s younger brother Ian had been the deciding factor. In its depictions of the mechanics of aerial combat and military aviation, it is as meticulous and detailed as a work of history.Part of the reason for the ponderousness of Bomber is the literary weight of what Deighton is trying to do - conveying the brutality of war, the waste of a generation of young men, while making his portrayal evenhanded with the reader caring for people on both sides. Listen to this podcast below or on your audio platform of choice ( Apple Podcasts / Soundcloud / Spotify/ YouTube), or use the streaming links below. Their degree of stability depended as much upon the pilot’s strength as upon his skill, for the controls were not power-assisted and it required all of a man’s energy to heave the control surfaces into the airstream.

The bombs are loaded into the Lancasters, the German radars "warm up", and the fighter pilots adjust their night vision. At the same time, his crew revere him and believe that he is the one factor that will ensure their survival. There is probably a mix of shame and the feeling everything is just too random to make a story seem meaningful. He introduces us to the men (and a handful of women) in a single RAF Bomber Command squadron, with a focus on the men of one crew who fly a Lancaster bomber. The rest of us will regard [Len Deighton’s thrillers] as carefully crafted literary fiction — intelligent books packed with grit, wit, sharp dialogue, and well-drawn characters, books that explore geopolitical tensions, class division, and the human capacity for secrecy and subterfuge while maintaining high levels of intrigue and suspense.Based on the classic novel by Len Deighton, Bomber tells the story of the bombing war in Europe through the prism of a single Bomber Command raid one night in 1943. His knowledge of British and German fighter planes gets a bit monographic at times, but I'm guessing it fascinates military history aficionados. Because it’s obvious from the outset that something will go very wrong on the bombing mission that’s the centerpiece of the story.