One Flight Too Many: The Saga of a Young Spitfire Photographic Pilot in WW2 and Its Aftermath
Above; Jimmy Taylor
Photographic Reconnaissance (PR) has recently caught public interest and this book, written by a former PR Spitfire pilot, gives a very clear description of what he had to do, the aircraft and cameras he was given, how he planned and took his photographs, and how he navigated his way, alone and unarmed under constant observation by enemy radar, to his distant targets in Occupied Europe and Germany, often in difficult weather conditions, and returned safely with the films containing information of vital importance to the photo-interpreters at RAF Medmenham and to the Allied commanders.
This is also Jimmy Taylor’s autobiography, so the reader has access to his frank contemporary diary of autumn 1944 and goes with him on his exciting sorties, including when he was chased by a then-unknown German jet, and his last one, when his engine blewup and forced him to parachute into a part of eastern Holland and led to his eventual capture. It also set in train a heart-rending German atrocity, which still calls him back every year to the families of the victims. It led to his meeting many historians, both Dutch and English, and so to his discovering the remarkable activities of his 16 Squadron during Operation ‘Market Garden’, the experiences, both cheerful and tragic, of his friends and colleagues in the RAF, and the heroic behaviour of the Dutch Resistance
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