Goodbye, Mickey Mouse

Name: Goodbye, Mickey Mouse
Rating: 4.4 (704 reviews)

by Len Deighton

First published 1982

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4.4(704)

American fighter pilots stationed in eastern England in 1943 escort bomber formations into occupied Europe while waiting for the next mission to reduce the number of familiar faces in the mess. Captain Jamie Farebrother and the men around him live between intense aerial combat and the temporary normality of pubs, dances and relationships with local civilians.

Deighton sets the personal lives of the pilots against the expanding American air war over Germany. Technical skill and bravado cannot remove the arithmetic of casualties, and the novel follows the strain placed on friendship and romance by a campaign in which every return to base is provisional.