Born in 1919 Jack Colman was ambitious to become a Pilot. Joining the RAF shortly after his twenty-first birthday he was sent to Canada to learn to fly. As Pilot/Navigator on Liberators he completed a tour for Coastal Command from Iceland during which time he married Peggy. Changing to Beaufighters he was sent to the Far East until the end of the war. Although wanting to stay in the RAF, from 1946 to 1953 he flew as a Commercial Pilot for BEA before returning to Insurance and moving back to Yorkshire. He and Peggy had two boys Peter and Richard.
"""Writing in the first person, Colman brings the reader into the cockpit. He talks about the locations of controls and instruments and seamlessly describes visual cues from the cockpit when attacking land and maritime targets. On one mission, two of his four 20mm cannons exploded and blew the bottom off his airplane; the reader can feel the explosions, hear the noise, and feel the air streaming into the cockpit.""-- ""Air Power History"""