Kittyhawk Down: Dennis Copping & ET574
By Jonathan Nicholas
Format: Paperback
(1 customer review)
Publication Date: 28 Jul 2020
£9.99
Want to buy as an ebook? Click hereCategories: Crime and Thrillers, Historical
ISBN: 9781913208561Description
Sunday 28th June 1942
Flight Sergeant Dennis Copping took off in a single-seat Kittyhawk fighter for a short flight across Egypt. He never arrived at his destination. The aeroplane was later found crash-landed, virtually intact, three hundred miles into the Sahara with no sign of the pilot. There is evidence he survived the landing and indeed stayed with the aeroplane for a while, but he has so far never been found.
Why was it there and what happened to the pilot?
After extensive research including regular contact with surviving relatives and the man who first found the aeroplane, Jonathan Nicholas has pieced together Dennis Copping’s desert war blending real people, events and places into an exciting new novel, a thrilling wartime desert mystery never-before-told.
Jonathan Nicholas has been a professional writer since 2011 when he had a regular column in Police Review magazine and with the publication of his first book Hospital Beat. He has been a full-time author since retiring from the police in 2014. A lifelong aviation enthusiast, he became a glider pilot in 1977 with the Air Cadets and obtained a Private Pilot’s Licence in 1978. He is based in Nottingham.
Reviews
C. Anderson (Guest Review) - 11 Apr, 2021
This is an account of what might’ve/could’ve happened to RAF pilot D. Copping…. & is actually very good! It begins when a plane was found in 2012 in a desert in Egypt, & then goes back in time to tell of this young man’s journey of entering the RAF , his pilot training, & then deployment to N. Africa in 1940. It tells of the daily lives of those pilots & crews, during those early WWII years. Also tells a lot about the different ‘aeroplanes’ that the RAF used over that time period & place.
I really liked that at the beginning of the book, during the 2012 part…..the wording was like modern day vernacular, then when it went to the 1940’s part…the wording went to the vernacular of that time period…… you knew right away that you were in a different time period! They had to deal with many of the same issues as we do today, but talked/used different wording……that aspect really put the reader in the right place/time. A very good epilogue also, telling about what happened at the end of 1942.
I rounded up my rating to reward the easy educational aspect of this book, as I learned quite a bit myself…even my being an avid history reader! If you like WWII or military history, this is an easy, good read. I did receive an e-ARC of the book from The Book Guild via NetGalley, in return for reading it & offering my own fair/honest review.
