Roland Beamont (1920–2001)

Roland Beamont (1920-2001) was a fighter pilot in World War 2 and (in the post-war years) a test pilot, flying prototypes of the English Electric Canberra and Lightning. He also wrote fairly extensively about his flying experiences. This book consists of extracts from his wartime diaries. He flew Hurricanes with the RAF component of the British Expeditionary Force in France; then flew in the Battle of Britain. Based in the west of England, he flew against raids aimed at Exeter, Plymouth and show more Bristol, as well as often being tasked to take up slack where other squadrons had been directed to help fill in the western flank of the main thrust of the Luftwaffe's attacks on London.

After the Battle of Britain, he transferred to flying Hawker Typhoons and Tempests, and helped evolve the Tempest in particular as a ground-attack aircraft. In the midst of this service career, he had spells with Hawkers as a test pilot for particular projects. In October 1944, he was shot down in Europe and spent the last months of the war as a prisoner of war.

This book has been specifically compiled from his war diaries. It therefore omits time he spent as a test pilot during the war. The section dealing with his time as a PoW is taken from a wholly different document, and although it is inserted in the correct place, it recapitulates quite a lot of what has already been said in the book before actually addressing his time in captivity. Overall, this lack of continuity does disorient the reader a little. The publishers say that his test flying experiences are covered in other books, but that doesn't help the flow of the narrative here.

The text is reproduced directly from Beamont's diaries. This means that they are written in the pilots' vernacular of the time, and at first glance seem to be of the "Tally Ho, chaps!", "Wizard prang, old boy" sort. But after a little while, I found that I was reading between the lines, and the realities of flying under all weather conditions, or at night, in quite basic aeroplanes and with few or no flying aids (Ground Controlled Approach, or GCA, was only introduced to some airfields during the war and basic radar was only installed on dedicated night fighters and was certainly not a feature of 'day fighters' until the coming of the jet age) came home to me very directly.

Beamont writes with some simplicity about the toll of young pilots that military flying took; his account may seem unemotional, but such displays would have been unthinkable in those days. Given what we now know about PTSD, perhaps that was not a good thing. My own father, who was an infantryman and saw active service in Italy, never manifested any outward signs of a lasting effect of his combat experiences. He also claimed to never dream about the war, or indeed anything; but that was not so, and I can only speculate that the suppression of his dreams was some sign that not everything was right. Beamont was from the same generation, so I have to assume a similar mindset.

Something else, less personal, can also be teased out of the text. There was a constant campaign within the British Air Ministry during the war waged by Hawkers to have the Vickers-Supermarine Spitfire replaced by the Hawker Typhoon as the newer, faster and better armed aircraft. Despite the prevailing atmosphere of "pulling together" and "don't you know there's a war on?", commercial considerations still reared their heads, and Hawkers were continually lobbying and plotting to gain advantage. What Hawkers did not know was that Vickers were exploring replacing the Rolls Royce Merlin in the Spitfire with the more powerful Griffon engine; this all came to a head when the Air Ministry were persuaded to hold a comparative display before top people between a Hawker Typhoon, a German Focke Wulf Fw.190 which had fallen into our hands, and a Spitfire. Jeffrey Quill, the Vickers test pilot, tells this story in his 1986 memoir, Spitfire; a test pilot's story; how he confounded all expectations by taking the first Griffon-engined Spitfire to the trial, which promptly out-performed everything else. Beamont wasn't involved in this, but there are sufficient clues in the text to back up the stories of the behind-the-scenes plotting which corroborates Quill's account. The story may still be there to be found in dry Air Ministry memos, buried in the National Archives at Kew...

So overall, once I got past the 'Boys' Own Paper' language of the text, I found a significant first-hand account of combat flying from World War 2. It certainly isn't Beamont's entire flying story but it is a valuable account. show less

I have not read much about British aircraft from WWII. The topic has never really caught me. But for these three types I have a little more than ordinary interest. The Mosquito because it has such beautiful lines and such a high performance as only the British can make them on a good day. The Typhoon and Tempest because they ended up being formidable fighter bombers, fully on par with the P-47 Thunderbolt, USAAF's fighter bomber par excellence

This is a good and informative book which I can show more recommend without reservations show less

Filled with photos and first hand accounts by the men who flew these aircraft make this an excellent book.