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A fantastic tale.

A memoir of a life in the Royal Air Force and a battle against an incurable disease, ‘Bugs’ Bendell joined the Royal Air Force in 1953 just as the service was converting to jets. His career spanned 34 years and in that time he became perhaps the finest fighter pilot of his generation. He racked up more than 4000 hours in planes as varied as the Tiger Moth, the Harvard, the hunter jet interceptor etc. So renowned were his skills that he ended up training American pilots on American planes in America. His career also took him to Germany, Cyprus, the Middle East, and Far East. But in early 1980’s he experienced dizziness and had problems with hand eye coordination. Diagnosed with MS. Retired 1987 but was determined to finish his book.

Review: OK, full disclosure – I am Bug’s niece. And I wasn’t expecting to enjoy this book (sorry Bugs) – I assumed it was written for, and would only appeal to, RAF folk. But I was wrong. Bug’s story is a remarkable one – he discovered early in life that he loved to fly – when he wasn’t flying, he was dreaming about it. He gained legendary status after famously blowing out all the windows in the Wattisham ATC tower during a high-speed flypast in 1963, probably inspiring a whole new generation of recruits into the RAF. And he freely admits that being an ace fighter pilot in the fifties and sixties was ‘a lot of fun’.

But his career was cut cruelly short by Multiple Sclerosis, diagnosed in the late 1970s. You can’t fly with MS, and there is no cure. You could say he had every reason to be bitter. Yet my uncle is a man of great humour, and a wonderful teller of stories, who I’ve never heard complain, once, though he’s now confined to a wheelchair. His gift for storytelling, and his dry, often mischievous wit, really come out in this book. And having read it I am proud to be related to this man – the brave uncle, the ace fighter pilot and the author of this wonderful book.