Spirit of the Blue

by Hugh Thomas

Few RAF pilots flew operationally from the beginning to the end of the Second World War. Fewer still can claim to have taken part in the Battle of France, Battle of Britain, El Alamein, and the D-Day landings as well as bomber escort duties in the closing days of the war. Peter Ayerst is one such man and his tale is, as yet, untold.Illustrated with photographs, this is the previously unpublished story of an RAF Second World War fighter pilot ace. Peter Ayerst joined the RAF in 1938 on a short service commission and was despatched as part of the Advanced Air Striking Force to France at the beginning of September 1939, gaining his first kills. He became the first RAF pilot to engage a Bf 109 in combat and survived a confrontation with twenty-seven enemy aircraft, his Hurricane riddled with bullets. With the fall of France, Peter was recalled to England where he spent the Battle of Britain summer of 1940 instructing at No. 7 OTU Hawarden, shooting down a Heinkel He 111 bomber.

Peter was then posted to North Africa in 1942 where he was shot down in the desrt and crash-landed in a minefield! He flew a variety of missions, culminating in a strafing of Axis motor targets 400 miles behind enemy lines, personally detroying a Junkers Ju 52 and seventeen vehicles. Following a period of instructing in South Africa, Peter returned to Britain in 1944, flying high-altitude Spitfires on interception flights over France. He took part in escort duties on D-Day and at the end of 1944 he was awarded the DFC. Peter also flew bomber escort duties of the Ruhr and escorted King George VI's personal flight. In the closing months of the war he flew Spitfires in support of mass daylight bomber raids deep into Germany.

By the war's end, Peter had flown every operational mark of Spitfire and Hurricane in the RAF's inventory. Alex Henshaw was instrumental in choosing him as a test pilot for Vickers at Castle Bromwich where he flew production Spitfire Mk XIs, XVIs and 22s.

254 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2004

About the author

Librarian’s note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Hugh Swynnerton Thomas, Baron Thomas of Swynnerton, was a British historian and Hispanist.

Thomas was educated at Sherborne School in Dorset before taking a BA in 1953 at Queens' College, Cambridge. He also studied at the Sorbonne in Paris. His 1961 book The Spanish Civil War won the Somerset Maugham Award for 1962. A significantly revised and enlarged third edition was published in 1977. Cuba, or the Pursuit of Freedom (1971) is a book of over 1,500 pages tracing the history of Cuba from Spanish colonial rule until the Cuban Revolution. Thomas spent 10 years researching the contents of this book.

Thomas was married to the former Vanessa Jebb, daughter of the first Acting United Nations Secretary-General Gladwyn Jebb.

From 1966 to 1975 Thomas was Professor of History at the University of Reading. He was Director of the Centre for Policy Studies in London from 1979 to 1991, as an ally of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. He became a life peer as Baron Thomas of Swynnerton, of Notting Hill in Greater London in letters patent dated 16 June 1981. He has written pro-European political works, as well as histories. He is also the author of three novels.

Thomas's The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440-1870 "begins with the first Portuguese slaving expeditions, before Columbus's voyage to the New World, and ends with the last gasp of the slave trade, long since made illegal elsewhere, in Cuba and Brazil, twenty-five years after the American Emancipation Proclamation," according to the summary on the book jacket.

Thomas should not be confused with two other historical writers: W. Hugh Thomas writes about Nazi Germany and Hugh M. Thomas is an American who writes on English history.

Reviews

[KOMET · Rating 4 out of 5]

Peter Ayerst led a unique and varied career as a Royal Air Force (RAF) pilot. He joined the RAF in 1938 and was the recipient of a thorough, peacetime flight training program.

Shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, Ayerst was posted to France with No. 73 Squadron, flying the Hawker Hurricane fighter. He saw extensive action against the Luftwaffe during the 'Phoney War' period (which lasted up to May 10, 1940, when Germany launched its Blitzkrieg against Western Europe), the Battle of France, the Dunkirk Evacuation, and the Battle of Britain.

Following the conclusion of the Battle of Britain, Ayerst was given flight instructor duties in the UK, which he carried out til he was posted to serve with a Hurricane squadron in North Africa in September 1942. He went on to fly combat missions over France in the aftermath of the D-Day landings, and finished the war flying bomber escort missions.

Ayerst was part of a rare breed of RAF fighter pilots who had seen action throughout the war. In peacetime, he became a test pilot and carried out administrative and command duties til he retired from the RAF on May 5, 1973. All in all, this is a good book for any aviation enthusiast.

[Dolf Patijn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Peter Ayerst was a remarkable pilot and one of the few pilots who flew fighter planes during all of the Second World War and after. His story is an interesting one. The problem is that Hugh Thomas writes a very factual account but rarely goes beyond that. Where is the emotion? Friends of Ayerst died during missions. The war wasn't always going so well. Sticking with the facts also means here that Hugh Thomas didn't create a lot of atmosphere to help pull me in as a reader. Two-and-a-half stars.