Squadron

Sidney Allinson is the editor at the Royal Canadian Military Institute
and author of The Bantams: The Untold Story of World War I.

There are few anywhere who equal Dunmore as a writer of aviation novels.
This Hamilton-based author’s twenty-year career has produced eight
books, including the near-classic Bomb Run. Now, with Squadron, Dunmore
continues his accurate portrayal of the airmen of the RAF Bomber Command
in World War II—more than fifty thousand of whom were killed in action
over Nazi-occupied Europe. To convey their story, he uses the literary
device of focusing on airmen carrying out each typical crew duty: pilot,
gunner, navigator, bomb-aimer, flight engineer, etc.

As usual, Dunmore’s portrayal of these specific roles is bang-on
technically, giving a clear picture of how a Halifax bomber crew worked
together on hazardous night operations. Twelve episodes follow the
bravery, fear, and death or survival of various airmen, who, although
fictional, are realistic and historically accurate. Dunmore also
includes ground-crew members, often neglected in other air force
accounts. One memorable character is a “chop girl,” one of those
tragic young women whose romances with airmen seemed to automatically
doom each in turn to death.

Squadron shows a marked change in the author’s style. In this book,
he gives almost self-consciously ironic twists to several episodes.
Perhaps this irony might have been more effective if the similar
malice-of-fate endings had been more separated, instead of being
presented one after the other. Despite this, a high score goes to this
authentic Dunmore novel based on the gallant British Commonwealth bomber
crews of half a century ago.