Goshawk Squadron by Derek Robinson Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Goshawk Squadron
Book Review: Good First Novel, But Not His Best
Summary: 3 Stars
Good novel of the knights of the air in World War I. Story of a British squadron of fighter pilots in SE-5s. Like his much better Piece of Cake (RAF in battle for France and battle of Britain) almost half of book is taken up by training and mess antics. Great dialogue but not much action until second half of book. Some dogfighting. Not as much as I'd like to have. Squadron Leader Wooley character reminds me of personality of Sgt. Stryker in Sands of Iwo Jima. Very tough on his charges but utterly determined to get them home safe from the war. Worth a read but definitely not Derek Robinson's best book.Book Review: Good Gosh
Summary: 5 Stars
Second time through I was more aware of the subtle humor. First time through I was caught up in the action, bizarre and rational. It held my attention until the end, and what an end, quite in keeping with the author's view of war and the sacrifices it demands of those involved. Third time through, I'll probably get more of the characters, although even in the beginning, they were usually detailed, except for those who came and went before anyone even caught their names.Book Review: Nothing Woolley here...
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a stunning book. Wonderful characters, biting humour. This would make an absolutely stunning film provided it wasnt made by an American studio, and just left unadulterated. I even started to draft a stage version when I was at school because I thought the strength of the characters could come across without even being able to realise the aerial combat sequences. Its hard not to think of ourselves in terms of the youngsters posted to the squadron, and revile in the northern cynisism of Major Woolley, but as the story unfold, you start to see the cracks in his veneer and how very hard he is trying too get the message across to his young charges, they are here not to survive, but to kill. Like the "municipal rat catcher".
They went into combat in what were basically powered kites, structural failure was common, often pilots went into action with less than 10 hours flying experience. No time to train at the front, just the hope that as "anti-Woolley" Biggles used to say, "if you survice your first couple of trips, you might survive a week, if you get to a month, then you have a chance of becoming a bigger danger to the hun than you are to yourself."
Ask youself that if you were to go into combat, what sort of leader would you like? Hopefully, you will never have to, but read this book and remember those who did.
Book Review: The RFC without the glamour
Summary: 5 Stars
Like most others I know of who have read Derek Robinson's novels of British fliers in WWI and WWII, I think him far and away the best writer on the subject. With relentless humor and realism he gets us to imagine what it was like to be pretty certain you were going to die there, just unsure when.
And he is unsparing of staff leadership that didn't have a clue. In Robinson's war, you fly to kill people--neither more nor less--or die yourself.
I like this novel of the 1918 campaigns a bit less well than the hard-to-find Hornet's Sting about the early war, 1915, in which the humor, suitable to the absurd reality really works. But I like it better than his best known and very good WWII book about the RAF in the Battle of Britain stripped of myth, A Piece of Cake. It is a shame that his books aren't more easily available.
Book Review: War is hell.
Summary: 5 Stars
This book ranks with "All Quiet on the Western Front" and "Das Boot" and many others as an illustration of the fact that war is humankind's worst activity. You are led to empathy with most of the characters, yet their lives are ultimately wasted in the meatgrinder. Commanding officer Woolley tries to teach his pilots the lesson that chivalry is dead, there's no reason at all to fight fair, and would agree with General Pattton that "No [...]ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb [...]die for his country." Not even civilians on the Goshawk Squadron's own side escape the brutality.
Depressing, but real.
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