NIGHT FLYER
by
Squadron-Leader Lewis Brandon
D.S.O., D.F.C. and Bar
The art of successful night-fighting was something that could not easily bc learned the pilot and navigator had to work together as a team, to think and move as one man. Success, and sur-vival, depended on the skill of both. author and his pilot, Wing-Commander Benson were crewed together by a fortunate chance; Brandon was a newly recruited and inexperienced navigator, whose only claim to distinction was that he had enlisted in the full regalia of a Gestapo officer-before the war he had been Robert Donat's stand-in and was working on a film when his call-up papers arrived;
Benson was already a Flying Officer and a seasoned pilot who had shot down a heavy German bomber with a Defiant, which was something of a feat; together they formed one of the most successful night-fighting teams in the business.
They remained in partnership throughout the war, almost without a break; their gallantry earned them a D.S.O. and a couple of D.F.C.s each; together they inflicted heavy losses on the enemy.
They started on the Beaufighter which had been designed for night-flying, then they were equipped with the more efficient Mosquitos; many of the improvements to the plane and the new items of equipment were tried out by them. They had their brushes with / disaster, their share of hairbreadth escapes, but their skill and determination got them through. In all the phases of the war, from desperate defensive to spirited offensive, they fought on together until the war was ended. This is a fascinating story of human achievement and it is also the history of night-fighting and its development in the Second World War from the early days to the very end.