Red Leader Down by Ken Catran
Ken Catran has done it again. Somehow he manages to capture the adventure of war without dressing it up to be glamorous. He accomplished this with his wonderful series about the Moran family and now looks at the final days of WW II and the fighter pilots who were fighting Hitler’s ‘last fifty planes.’
The story opens with a young man apparently seeing the ghost of his grandfather, a strange old man who had little time for his family. The ghost claims there is more to his wartime experience than the family knows and Matt will need to go find out. He later discovers that the old man has died, and when he attends the funeral he meets a few of his grandfather’s wartime ‘buddies’. The house was trashed before the family could arrive to look after the place, so Matt gets left behind to prevent any more damage. One thing leads to another, and eventually Matt discovers a journal that was written by his grandfather for him to read.
And there the adventure begins. There is enough action in this book for anyone. As we all know the British fighter pilots kept going up again and again until they died, were captured, or the Germans were beaten. So the book is packed full of dogfights, gunfights and even some escapes. But this is no Biggles. The flamable aircraft left hundreds of pilots burned beyond recognition, and these poor souls are included in the commentary. And every dogfight has its casualties, and sometimes they are friends.
In a couple of weeks I will be talking about war stories and I look forward to including this tale in my collection of Ken Catran stories.
