Books by Jack (Author) Currie

This is a gripping account of the ill-fated RAF raid, on 3 May 1944, on the Panzer tank depot and military barracks at Mailly-le-Camp south of Rheims in northern France, part of the softening up process on German military targets, in preparation for the D-Day landings. Raids like this over occupied France were considered relatively low risk affairs and only counted for one third of a mission for the crews concerned. In total, 362 RAF bombers, Lancasters, Mosquitoes and Halifax, from bases in England took part in a raid and although no-one involved anticipated disaster, forty-two Lancasters never returned home. Almost incredibly, those who planned the attack were apparently unaware that four German night fighter bases were located nearby. Luftwaffe fighters wreaked havoc on the bombers as they circled a marker in bright moonlight awaiting the order to attack their targetThis is the story of that battle, bitterly contested and ever-remembered by those who were engaged, one among hundreds that were fought in the skies over Europe between the RAF's bombers and the Luftwaffe's night-fighters in the course of World War Two. It lasted less than sixty minutes but cost two hundred and fifty-five lives.

More so than even the sea, the world of aviation has spawned an amazing store of tales of ghosts, the supernatural and inexplicable events, ghostly bombers and phantom aircrew on long-deserted airfields, prophetic warnings from beyond the grave, restless spirits apparently drawn back to places from which they flew.

Mosquito Victory is the final volume of the autobiographical trilogy which includes Wings Over Georgia and Lancaster Target. The anvil-top ahead of me was brilliantly white--whiter than a prince's pillow-case, or Caribbean teeth, or angel's wings. Pittam and I were flying at 25,000 feet, and it hung above us, dazzling in the April sun. Extract from Mosquito Victory.