The RAF’s Youngest Bomber Pilot of WW2

Book Review: The RAF’s Youngest Bomber Pilot of WW2

By Graham Waterton

Air World 2024

ISBN 9781399080170

272 pges, hardback

What a contradictory book this is. If you persevere you will find a well presented and moving account of a boy from Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, who lied about his age to join the RAF and flew Wellingtons and Lancasters in Bomber Command.

Brian Slade rose to the rank of Flight Lieutenant, was awarded the DFC and was killed, along with his crew, apart from the rear gunner, on an operation to Berlin in August 1943. Slade was still only 19.

The author is Brian Slade’s nephew. For the most part he writes well, telling with passion a story which deserves to be published. He moves things along, stirs our emotions and lets the facts produce the drama. There is much insight and understanding beyond that achieved by many authors.

So why is perseverance needed? Mr Waterton inserts a lot of himself into the narrative and that will not be to everybody’s taste. He makes sweeping statements and is not averse to a cliché. We are told at one point that the Battle of Britain raged overhead, for example. Sometimes his insightfulness crumbles into errors large and small.

However, the worst thing about this book is the title. It looks to be an ambitious claim, difficult to sustain. It’s so difficult that the author’s appetite for maintaining it lasts only as far as the second paragraph of his preface where he writes, “Brian’s decision to volunteer resulted in him being one of the youngest, if not the youngest, RAF bomber pilots in the Second World War ………”

So the evidence isn’t available to confirm the claim on the cover. If there is to be another edition, give the book a sustainable title and a thorough edit and author and publisher might well be dealing with something of a classic.