Ginger Lacey – Fighter Pilot

I was in the local library last week and happened to spot a talking book on the shelf as I passed by called ‘Ginger Lacey – Fighter Pilot’. Naturally I grabbed it and I’ve been listening to it over the past few days as I can.

This is a reading of the book ‘Ginger Lacey – Fighter Pilot’ by Richard Townshend Bickers, who was himself a wartime pilot it seems.

The talking book is read by John Hendry who does it very well indeed. There are five cassettes in this set, it’s unabridged and I’d guess each tape is at least an hour.

I have read little snippets over the years about Lacey but never anything indepth, and I have to say that this book is just brilliant. The detail that it goes into about his life and his various combats, the scrapes he got into and all the other stuff – it’s all very interesting and you find it hard to tear yourself away. There are some great humurous moments too of course.

It is fascinating to hear about his days in France, and his later days in Burma. I’d only read about his Battle of Britain exploits before. He did a lot of OTU and development flying too, including being on the team that perfected rockets fired from aircraft. He must have had a fascinating logbook by the end of it all.

One thing that has caught my interest, I’m onto the last leg of the story where he’s flying with No. 17 Squadron in Burma and it mentions a few times about flying the squadron’s communications Harvard. I never realised the RAF had Harvards in Burma, though it does make sense. Did all the fighter squadrons have one on strength? Would it have worn camouflage considering they were a front line fighter unit? I’d love to see photos of Burma Harvards if anyone has any, cheers.