Under an English Heaven

I'd had this book lying around for some time and finally decided I'd better read it! I'm glad I did. This is a wonderfully written, moving book about the American crew of a B17 bomber based in Norfolk during World War 2. It starts with carnage as one pilot loses his whole crew while another crew loses their pilot. You can guess that they are teamed up. The damage and post-traumatic stress they all suffer is movingly captured by Radcliffe, as is their growing sense of camaraderie as they rack up mission after mission on their way to that elusive number 25, which means they can go home.

Radcliffe's descriptions of the missions are tense and accurate, conveying some sense of the claustrophobia and sheer terror these men experienced as they flew missions deep into enemy territory. But the book doesn't just focus on the Americans. It also touches on the lives of some of the people from the village near the airbase, especially a young evacuee, Billy Street, who's obssessed with the bomber crews, and Heather, a teacher who's husband is a prisoner of war in a Japanese prison camp and who finds a soulmate in the damaged pilot Hooper.

There's a nice twist at the end too which I won't spoil, but this is a great book which manages to be both exciting and believable, while paying tribute to the brave souls who fought and died in the skies above Europe during those fateful years.