Wednesday, March 11, 2020

Commando: Braddock! - Ferg Handley


"Better you just forget about being a pilot," said Squadron Leader Roy Suddaby when Matt Braddock first tried to enlist in the auxiliaries. But he wasn't a quitter, and the blue-eyed man with uncanny talent would fight his way to the best bombing squad in Britain before he could bring the fight to Nazi Germany. The war is on, and the RAF's best known bomber ace is back in this all-new adventure!

(I assume from the sales copy that the protagonist of this yarn has appeared previously in COMMANDO, but this is the first story I've read about him and chronologically the first Braddock tale as well, since it begins before World War II and concerns his early days in the RAF. Braddock is a working class guy who becomes a pilot over the opposition of the upper-crust officers and fellow pilots, but he's still only a sergeant when he takes command of a bomber. Braddock's ambition is to fly fighters, so he tries to make the larger, slower, and clumsier bomber do things that a fighter plane would, and manages to succeed most of the time. This is another excellent story from long-time COMMANDO scripter Ferg Handley. I've already bought the next issue in the Braddock series.)

1 comment:

John Smith said...

Braddock's tale was probably taken from the life of Adrian Warburton. Warburton shot down aircraft while flying a Martin Maryland bomber over Malta. His exploits over Malta were legendary.