Book Review: Spitfire Pilot by Canfield Cook
Bob “Lucky” Terrell may be from Texas, in the currently neutral United States of America, but he knows the Nazis are bad news, so he enlisted via Canada for the Royal Air Force. He turns out to be a very good pilot, so has been trained on the advanced Spitfire fighter plane and has now joined Y Squadron in England.
The Battle of Britain is raging, and rookie fighter pilot Lucky soon sees action. However, he pulls a major boner on his first mission, breaking formation to pursue an enemy bomber no one else sees. Although he is able to down the target (unverified), Lucky’s disobedience to orders gets him taken off the flight roster and snubbed in the mess.
Taking a weekend pass to London with his British colleague Eric Prentiss allows Lucky to see the pluck with which the locals are handling the bombing raids on the city, and Lucky even assists Eric’s pretty sister Marcia with her Ambulance Corps duties, saving children from a burning building. He’s filled with new resolve and respect for his duty and is soon flying again.
This was the first of the Lucky Terrell Flying series; I’ve previously reviewed Springboard to Tokyo. This volume is fairly realistic, the later ones became more and more fantastic.
Lucky performs well, earning a place in the squadron’s esteem. He also performs a small kindness for a captured German pilot which rebounds to his favor later.
Eventually, Lucky is shot down over occupied France, and must find a way to escape captivity before he’s transferred to a prisoner of war camp further inland. This involves an impersonation and series of lucky coincidences that are easily the least plausible thing in the story.
While the book was published in 1942, internal evidence sets the action in early 1941, and the way it’s written suggests that it was completed before America entered the war (though Pearl Harbor did no doubt cause the demand for such books to skyrocket.) It’s a “juvenile”, aimed primarily at teenagers, but war-loving readers, especially boys, of ten and up should be able to enjoy it.
Marcia is underage by today’s standards, but any romance will have to be inferred in as she only interacts with Lucky briefly under circumstances that don’t lend themselves to private conversations. Parents and guardians of younger readers may want to discuss the subtleties of propaganda.
