Book
The Mustering of the Hawks
First published 1976
In the skies over France, only the hawks survived. 1917. The average life-expectancy of an RAF pilot on the Western Front is three weeks. Inexperienced young men are hurled into vicious dogfights over the trenches, often without adequate training, and are slaughtered by the German aces. Into this hell arrives Ira Penaluna, only nineteen years old and totally in love with aviation. As those who have become his friends die one-by-one, Ira realises that in a world where skill, speed and killer-instinct are all, there is only one way to survive: to think like a hawk. A searing, moving novel of the First World War, full to the brim with detailed historical research,
The story is rooted in the rapid development of fighter aviation on the Western Front, where aircraft, tactics and life expectancy changed with exceptional speed. Ira’s maturation is inseparable from the losses of his squadron and the professionalisation of aerial combat.
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