W. E. Johns (1893–1968)

A Biggles book where you can see how he's going to get drawn into Major Raymond's end of things. This story is about a schoolboy who pretends to be in the RAF to rescue his brother. His mentor in 266 squadron is Biggles, and Algy also features.

The interesting part for me as an adult is the descriptions of what it was like.

"...Looking down he saw an expanse of brown earth, perhaps a mile in width, gradually merging into dull green on either side. Through the brown expanse that coiled like a show more mighty serpent across the landscape from west to east ran tiny zigzag lines, hundreds of them, making a cobweb-like pattern. His breath suddenly came faster as he realized that he was looking at the actual lines where two mighty armies were entrenched, grappling in a stupendous life and death struggle. From time to time tiny white puffs appeared, and drifted sluggishly across the brown expanse. They looked harmless enough, but he knew that they must be the smoke of bursting shells."

Any story where one of the heroes falls asleep during the debrief has a fair bit of realism involved.

with Peter "Thirty" Fortymore as the main character you can see him losing his innocence about what war was about quite quickly, he still has a lot of derring do but this isn't going to be an easy or simple thing to do, to rescue his brother. He really works at it and finds himself at the front lines and learning the reality of war. Yes it's a boy's own adventure type thing and there were moments where my suspension of disbelief was strained but overall it's an interesting read with interesting characters who were probably fairly true-to-life. show less

In the early years of the Cold War, British scientists and others involved in the atomic weapons program mysteriously disappear.
Biggles and his colleagues of the Special Air Police are directed by Air Commodore Raymond are travel to a remote region within Mongolia where it is believed the kidnapped men are hidden away.
Another outstanding tale from W E Johns. The mystery is well laid out, the setting both dangerous and extremely isolated. Johns’ crafts another excellent, lean narrative. show more Each chapter built around plot points both significant and enthralling.
Another outstanding Biggles tale. show less

There are a couple of different types of Biggles books. This is the war adventure variant. People will die. There will be blood.

The story is set in the middle of the Sahara desert where Biggles and his squadron has been sent to stop the losses of transport planes going to Egypt. Quite quickly they figure out that there are Nazis in the desert as well and from them on it's a never-stopping battle between

Somewhere in the story there is a morality message saying that you will come out ahead if show more you behave honorable. I think the author screwed up that message a bit. Anyway, nobody reads Biggles books for those things. We all read them for the adventure, the action and this book has a lot of action. Very high pace. show less

I want to begin by saying that I never realised how funny Biggles was until I read this collection of short stories. Don't get me wrong, not all of the Biggle's stories (and there are an awful lot of them) are comical, many of them are adventure stories, but from John's introduction to this book, and the nature of air combat in World War I, the stories can be quite amusing, especially since he indicates that when it came to air combat truth is stranger than fiction (at which point he tells a show more story of a pilot who flipped the plane, fell out of the cockpit, grabbed hold of the machinegun, and then managed to flip the plane back over).
Captain W.E. Johns was a war veteran so the two things he knew really well was fighting in World War I (he fought in Gallipoli, the Middle East, and on the Western Front) and air combat. The reason I say air combat is because halfway through the war he returned to England, learned how to fly (planes were only beginning to appear in the second half of the war, and were used as scouts, as well as to drop bricks on enemy positions) and then began teaching others to fly. Remember that at this time flight was still a very new invention and there was a high chance that when you went up you would not be coming back. This actually happened to Johns in that he only flew combat missions for six weeks before being shot down by a German and ended up spending the rest of the war in a POW camp (and being in September 1918 he wasn't there for very long).
Johns remained in the Royal Flying Corps until 1927 when he retired and began writing books, his most popular being the Biggles books. This is not surprising since by the 1930s pilots were looked on a heroes, and as such Biggles was created as being the pinnacle of this new hero. In World War I the pilots were on the cutting edge of technology and acted more like special forces operatives than the airforce pilots that are around today. Consider this, you could probably name more World War I pilots than you could name pilots from any other era, even if the only pilot that you can name is The Red Baron (and you can add Captain Johns to that list to make two).
As I said, these World War I stories are much more comical than adventurous. The later Biggles stories have him as a spy and as an air policeman, however it is these World War I stories that everybody remembers. Seriously, Biggles is forever crashing planes (he crashes three of them in this book) as well as shooting down at least 15 German planes (which makes him an Ace, even if the British did not measure success based on how many planes you shot down. Personally I would measure success based upon the number of missions that you come back from, and from what I understand, even surviving one mission is a effort in itself).
As for the stories, the first one has him take the plane up into the air to test it out and while up there he decides to go for a fly over enemy territory. Biggles then proceeds to crash the plane and escapes back to friendly territory by stealing a balloon (and almost get shot down by friendly fire in the process). Another has him flying over enemy lines on Christmas purely to steal a turkey, and another one is a competition as to who can fly the furthest over enemies lines to dump propaganda leaflets on the enemy. Oh, and there is the one with the camera which, surprise surprise, results in Biggles crashing the plane. show less