Tail-End Charlies Quotes

“So we had to take up the challenge or for ever lose the right to be decent, self-respecting inhabitants of a free world. It became necessary for us to forget the rules temporarily so that in the future rules could occupy a permanent, honoured place in a better way of life.”
― John Nichol, Tail-End Charlies: The Last Battles of the Bomber War 1944-45

“But this was life in those days. Today we are a totally different society. We put out bunches of flowers, have little vigils, hold hands and have counsellors to tell us all what to do. It was totally different then. The world events were so monumental that you had no time to think about the people who had fallen by the wayside. If we had had today’s attitudes, we would never have won the war.”
― John Nichol, Tail-End Charlies: The Last Battles of the Bomber War 1944-45

“In 1941, after a year’s experience of bombing Germany, a crucial Air Ministry analysis of photographic evidence had revealed that only 22 per cent of bomber crews who claimed to have hit their target actually got within five miles of it.5 In the more heavily defended Ruhr”
― John Nichol, Tail-End Charlies: The Last Battles of the Bomber War 1944-45

“Major (later General) Curtis LeMay recalled the shock of fog when he flew in to a British airfield for the first time from the US. ‘Can you see the runway lights?’ the control tower asked the pilot of his aircraft, to which the pilot replied: ‘Shit, I can’t even see my copilot!”
― John Nichol, Tail-End Charlies: The Last Battles of the Bomber War 1944-45

“If we’ve been forced into a back-alley fight, are we to ignore the essential weapons of the street brawl?”
― John Nichol, Tail-End Charlies: The Last Battles of the Bomber War 1944-45