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Torpedo Leader
Light wear to the dust jacket. Shipped from the UK in recyclable card packaging.
Hardcover
First published January 1, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 16, 2017
You may notice a pattern to my recent reviews; my last review a few days ago was of "The Last Torpedo Flyers" by Arthur Aldridge and here I am again reviewing another memoir of a world war two Beaufort pilot who took part in critical shipping strikes from Malta during the summer of 1942.
Partly it is that Gibbs cut such a controversial figure in Aldridge's book. Aldridge the officer considered him inspirational and ultimately responsible for saving those few veteran crews of 217 squadron who survived through to August. Aldridge's gunner the NCO Bill Carroll thought Gibbs "A bull in a china shop ... you don't someone who has got angry eyes like that."
Realising that Gibbs too had published a memoir and given a chance for his voice to be heard in retelling those desperate summer months in Malta, I hurried to buy it and consumed it in a weekend.
The two books deserve to be read as a pair, for Aldridge and Gibbs's stories are both merit-worthy separate strands that became a braid in one mid-mediterranean moment. I found myself cross-referencing frantically to match up the accounts of the near disastrous anti-shipping raid with which Aldridge opens his book, or Gibbs first arrival in Malta where he crashlanded his damaged aircraft.
Their perspectives are different. Aldridge more the pilot concerned with tactics and survival, Gibbs the commanding officer looking at strategy and success. Gibbs writes more lyrically too, an eye for scene and setting while Aldridge is about action and event - both entertaining but contrasting.
Again luck plays a part - courted so fervently by Gibbs, both with his Panda mascot and also his meticulous planning (as Gary Player once said - "It's funny but the more I practice the luckier I get.") If Gibbs had not been injured and convalescing in the middle of his first tour he might have been thrown into the meat grinder of futile anti-shipping attacks in the winter of 1941-2.
Gibbs also shines a light on the incompetence and inefficiency even in wartime, the friction that plagues all human activity. The overmanned and under-planed RAF in Cairo with more deskjobs than flying jobs and a frustration of pointless files to confound a man as eager to be doing something as Gibbs was.
Gibbs makes some astute observations. Even if the damage done by some of these raids was out of proportion to the losses sustained, the real cost to the enemy was in the diversion of resources he could have used elsewhere.
Gibbs also has more of an insight into the higher echelons of command - and analysed what he knew along with the position he had, to make powerful strategic suggestions that ultimately changed the course of the war.
I knew Malta's survival had been vital, that it had led to Rommel's defeat through its stranglehold on his seaborne lines of supply. I had imagined this mean swarms of bombers in a kind of haphazard blanket sweeps of the sea to send dozens of ships to the bottom in a single sortie.
The truth is of a battle on a far smaller scale fought at a very personal level with meticulous planning. Convoys of merchantmen so precious they were heavily outnumbered by their expendable escorts, typically one or two merchantmen with twice that number of destroyers attacked by never more than a dozen torpedo carrying beauforts and frequently as few as six. Three sorties in a week was unusual but each took days of planning of shadowing the slow assembly of the targets and planning the point of interception. Against Bomber Harris's thousand bomber raids, this seems like such small fry - yet it makes for a story at once personal and vet also vital (as though Gibbs' tiny band were an airborne fellowship of the ring - on a quest to do the one simple individual task that would bring the enemy tumbling down).
Much of Aldridge's account is mirrored by Gibbs- the fantastic escape from captivity by one captured crew of the airman who hijacked an Italian flying boat and brought it to Malta is a well deserved highlight in both books. The reprieve that Gibbs earned for the battered veterans of 217 squadron at last released for Ceylon is seen in all its consequences - Gibbs insubordinate act ultimately forcing him to make a highly risky second attack on a tanker that had escaped 12 Beauforts unscathed.
However, some of that overlap may arise from Aldridge's book post dating Gibbs. Aldridge had certainly read Gibbs because he quotes the Wing-commander's closing sentence "You must have known that I would die in Malta; you must have known it was a ghost that made the journey home, a ghost which was haunted not by the past but by the shadow of an unknown future"
It is an odd line and to whom was it written. Much of Gibbs reference to home allude to a parting and a question "Do you have to go" to which he suddenly finds the surge of desire to be doing something pales beside the desire to stay at home and to promise to be home by Christmas. Though he never uses the phrase Gibbs was in love and the reader is left wondering who is the nameless person from whom he took such a sweet sorrowful parting. Who is the elegant but unnamed female "friend" who accompanied him to receive his award at Buckingham palace in 1943?
I was curious, far more curious about that barely acknowledged attachment than I was about the faux-romance in the fictionalised motor=torpedo-boat tale "Last Ditch" by John Wingate.
I read Gibbs obituary. I noticed that he was introduced to his later career of writing film reviews by the actress Muriel Pavlow. Pavlow was a film star in her early 20s when Gibbs a few years older set sail for Malta. Google as ever supplied images - some of which bore a striking resemblance to the woman at Gibbs' side on the day of his investiture. More curious still is that a number of Pavlow's films place her acting in RAF stories and that one in particular centered around the exact same heroic defence of Malta in which Gibbs played such a leading part -coincidence, perhaps not?!
Partly it is that Gibbs cut such a controversial figure in Aldridge's book. Aldridge the officer considered him inspirational and ultimately responsible for saving those few veteran crews of 217 squadron who survived through to August. Aldridge's gunner the NCO Bill Carroll thought Gibbs "A bull in a china shop ... you don't someone who has got angry eyes like that."
Realising that Gibbs too had published a memoir and given a chance for his voice to be heard in retelling those desperate summer months in Malta, I hurried to buy it and consumed it in a weekend.
The two books deserve to be read as a pair, for Aldridge and Gibbs's stories are both merit-worthy separate strands that became a braid in one mid-mediterranean moment. I found myself cross-referencing frantically to match up the accounts of the near disastrous anti-shipping raid with which Aldridge opens his book, or Gibbs first arrival in Malta where he crashlanded his damaged aircraft.
Their perspectives are different. Aldridge more the pilot concerned with tactics and survival, Gibbs the commanding officer looking at strategy and success. Gibbs writes more lyrically too, an eye for scene and setting while Aldridge is about action and event - both entertaining but contrasting.
Again luck plays a part - courted so fervently by Gibbs, both with his Panda mascot and also his meticulous planning (as Gary Player once said - "It's funny but the more I practice the luckier I get.") If Gibbs had not been injured and convalescing in the middle of his first tour he might have been thrown into the meat grinder of futile anti-shipping attacks in the winter of 1941-2.
Gibbs also shines a light on the incompetence and inefficiency even in wartime, the friction that plagues all human activity. The overmanned and under-planed RAF in Cairo with more deskjobs than flying jobs and a frustration of pointless files to confound a man as eager to be doing something as Gibbs was.
Gibbs makes some astute observations. Even if the damage done by some of these raids was out of proportion to the losses sustained, the real cost to the enemy was in the diversion of resources he could have used elsewhere.
Gibbs also has more of an insight into the higher echelons of command - and analysed what he knew along with the position he had, to make powerful strategic suggestions that ultimately changed the course of the war.
I knew Malta's survival had been vital, that it had led to Rommel's defeat through its stranglehold on his seaborne lines of supply. I had imagined this mean swarms of bombers in a kind of haphazard blanket sweeps of the sea to send dozens of ships to the bottom in a single sortie.
The truth is of a battle on a far smaller scale fought at a very personal level with meticulous planning. Convoys of merchantmen so precious they were heavily outnumbered by their expendable escorts, typically one or two merchantmen with twice that number of destroyers attacked by never more than a dozen torpedo carrying beauforts and frequently as few as six. Three sorties in a week was unusual but each took days of planning of shadowing the slow assembly of the targets and planning the point of interception. Against Bomber Harris's thousand bomber raids, this seems like such small fry - yet it makes for a story at once personal and vet also vital (as though Gibbs' tiny band were an airborne fellowship of the ring - on a quest to do the one simple individual task that would bring the enemy tumbling down).
Much of Aldridge's account is mirrored by Gibbs- the fantastic escape from captivity by one captured crew of the airman who hijacked an Italian flying boat and brought it to Malta is a well deserved highlight in both books. The reprieve that Gibbs earned for the battered veterans of 217 squadron at last released for Ceylon is seen in all its consequences - Gibbs insubordinate act ultimately forcing him to make a highly risky second attack on a tanker that had escaped 12 Beauforts unscathed.
However, some of that overlap may arise from Aldridge's book post dating Gibbs. Aldridge had certainly read Gibbs because he quotes the Wing-commander's closing sentence "You must have known that I would die in Malta; you must have known it was a ghost that made the journey home, a ghost which was haunted not by the past but by the shadow of an unknown future"
It is an odd line and to whom was it written. Much of Gibbs reference to home allude to a parting and a question "Do you have to go" to which he suddenly finds the surge of desire to be doing something pales beside the desire to stay at home and to promise to be home by Christmas. Though he never uses the phrase Gibbs was in love and the reader is left wondering who is the nameless person from whom he took such a sweet sorrowful parting. Who is the elegant but unnamed female "friend" who accompanied him to receive his award at Buckingham palace in 1943?
I was curious, far more curious about that barely acknowledged attachment than I was about the faux-romance in the fictionalised motor=torpedo-boat tale "Last Ditch" by John Wingate.
I read Gibbs obituary. I noticed that he was introduced to his later career of writing film reviews by the actress Muriel Pavlow. Pavlow was a film star in her early 20s when Gibbs a few years older set sail for Malta. Google as ever supplied images - some of which bore a striking resemblance to the woman at Gibbs' side on the day of his investiture. More curious still is that a number of Pavlow's films place her acting in RAF stories and that one in particular centered around the exact same heroic defence of Malta in which Gibbs played such a leading part -coincidence, perhaps not?!
February 11, 2020
The author has some real writing talent here, the entire thing almost reading like an ancient epic poem. Gibbs provides great insight to an oft ignored part of the allies war in the Mediterranean and ops flown from Malta other than the heroic fighter defense. The emotions, the highs, the lows, all are conveyed wonderfully. The ending sucker punched me out of no where, I really felt like I was there in the crew mess as he said his good byes, truly caused an emotional response and for that it lands on my 5 star shelf.
July 23, 2023
Wow!
I have read about Beaufort torpedo planes before. This was a gripping story of brains vs. bureaucracy. Brains won! It is a moving book about men with skill so I loved it.
I have read about Beaufort torpedo planes before. This was a gripping story of brains vs. bureaucracy. Brains won! It is a moving book about men with skill so I loved it.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews