Cavalry of the Clouds

- 'Impossible to read these stories without amazement' THE SUNDAY TIMES. - Detailed day-to-day account of seven months Flying over the Western Front in the Royal Flying Corps in 1916. - One of the first memoirs ever published by an RFC airmen. GONE in war are the dash and charge and thunder of galloping horsemen, gone the flashing of naked sabres, the screams of stricken horses, the swooping down upon supply train or camp of the grey horse troop. Here comes the 'Cavalry of the Clouds' - the airmen of the Royal Flying Corps. Into the clouds they go, a dip, a swoop, a dizzy spiral, sometimes dodging shrapnel below the clouds, and sometimes eluding enemy machines above, until the German aircraft drops like a blazing comet into the lines, or until the precious information is safely delivered to headquarters. This is Alan Bott's memoir of his life with 70 Squadron, flying the Sopwith Strutter, a reconnaissance fighter, fitted with the RFC's first forward-firing synchronised machine gun at the dawn of aerial combat. Covering just seven months, June to December 1916, Bott details missions over the Western Front, including the Battle of the Somme, his three aerial victories and winning the Military Cross. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Alan Bott was born in 1863 in Stoke-on-Trent. He worked as a journalist before and just after the outbreak of the First World War, including covering the British air raid on the Zeppelin factory in November 1914. He enlisted in 1915 and transferred to the Royal Flying Corps in 1916. He was awarded the Military Cross His war memoir was first published whilst the war still raged in 1917 as AN AIRMAN'S OUTINGS under the pseudonym 'Contact'. Later in the war he served in Egypt, where he shot down two more enemy aircraft becoming an 'ace' fighter pilot. He published a second volume of his memoirs covering this period as EASTERN NIGHTS AND FLIGHTS. After the war he founded Pan Books. He died in 1952. PRAISE FOR 'CAVALRY OF THE CLOUDS': 'Impossible to read these stories without amazement' THE SUNDAY TIMES; 'Enthralling' GLASGOW NEWS; 'A clear, well-expressed and vivid account of what flying on active service really is' ARMY & NAVY GAZETTE; 'All the exhilaration, poignancy, terror of his combats throb anew in his narrative... impossible to speak too highly of this book, either as an account of the fighting airman's experiences or as a literary performance' DAILY CHRONICLE.