SKY SPY

Bookplate on the title page signed in pencil by

Ray Holmes

Airlife First edition 1989.   226 pages plus photographs

Fine condition hardback book with a Fine unclipped dustjacket. The book is clean, bright and tight. A lovely copy.

Ray Holmes worked as a journalist, so he writes with clarity and flair. As a result, his memoir offers an engaging account of his life as a fighter pilot with 504 Squadron during the Battle of Britain.

On 15 September 1940, Sergeant Holmes spotted a Dornier 17 lining up to attack Buckingham Palace. He had no ammunition left, so he rammed the bomber and sliced off its tail. Holmes parachuted to safety. His Hurricane crashed at 400 miles per hour behind Victoria Station, well away from the palace. Meanwhile, the Dornier plunged into the station courtyard. The German pilot survived, and the incident was filmed.

In 2004, archaeologists unearthed parts of Holmes’s Hurricane for a Channel 5 documentary. Holmes visited the site on Buckingham Palace Road and saw the control column he last held 64 years earlier.

After the Battle of Britain, Holmes taught Russian pilots to fly Hurricanes in Murmansk. Later, he flew high‑altitude reconnaissance Spitfires with 541 Squadron. As a King’s Messenger after the war, he met Churchill and visited the ruins of Hitler’s bunker in Berlin. The memoir is a cracking read.

A superb Battle of Britain memoir with a neat signature.