FEW MEN HAVE A BETTER CLAIM TO BE CALLED A LEGEND
IN THEIR OWN LIFETIME THAN GUY GIBSON.
Leader of the famous Dambuster Raid of May 1943, which became
part of the popular folklore of the Second World War after the film
in which Richard Todd took the part of the hero, Gibson himself
was tragically in an air crash in 1944.
Born in India in 1918 and brought up in England, Guy Gibson
joined the RAF in November 1936. Thereafter his career can be seen
as a battle between, on the one hand, his uncertain temperament and
less than ideal private life, and, on the other, his undoubted skills as
an airman and as a leader of men.
The war was to bring him adventure and, later, fame. He took part in
the first aerial attack of the war, on the Kiel Canal; he served in
Fighter Command and then, in 1943, came the famous raid on the
Mohne and Eder dams for which he was awarded the Victoria Cross.
By now a hero of international fame, he was sent on a Public
Relations tour of North America, but he was above all a flyer and,
refusing to remain grounded, he died an airman's death.
This new edition, which draws on conversations with members of
Gibson's family and on notes made by his widow, expands upon his
early life in a severely dysfunctional family, his unhappy marriage and
the possible reason for his untimely death in September 1944.
