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Sky Over Scapa
 | Price: £25.00 Supplier: Orkney Creamery |
This substantial and well-illustrated volume tells the story of the squadrons based at Orkney's four war-time air stations. It is the product of an enormous amount of research and includes many first-hand accounts from servicemen and women. Pilots, ground crew and Wrens reminisce about their war-time activities and describe life in Orkney, which wa generally very different from what they were used to.
Hardback, 280 pages
First published 1991, re-printed 2007
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The pilots of No 253 Squadron and indeed of all sqadrons had to see Orkney,its weather and sea in all their moods. At times battered by wind and rain or blinded by the thickest of Scotch mists and all the attendant anxiety about getting back to base, there were times when the air was crystal clear with unbelievable visibility. The exhiliration felt by some of these young pilots for whom at times wart must have seemed a million miles away is expressed beautifully by [Air Commodore] Brown in his vignette of Orkney, Changing Skies:
The most abiding impression of Orkney was a sense of freedom, both in the air and on the ground. Apart from the gun defended area of the Flow the islands presented an extensive, uncluttered and unrestricted aerial playground... For the sole benefit of young fighter pilots, this exclusive flying arena provided, from time to time, huge white cumulus clouds with sharply defined edges and deep caverns through and around which to tailchase, twist, turn, dive vertically down the blossoming faces and climb steeply to loop over their burgeoning tops...At the other end of the aerial scale, at low level, there was the sea rolling in from the Atlantic and offering its broad curling waves with their foaming crests to be skimmed and the breakers to be chased along the deserted curving beaches. There were uninhabited islands over which to practise low level aerobatics with no one to complain and, hoefully, a Squadron Commander blissfully unaware of just how low they were. And if an appreciative audience was required, the lighthouse keepers always seemed to enjoy the show and the unexpected company.
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