Operation Thor — Frederick E. Smith

Like the seven novels that precede it, this is a story of the lives, loves and sacrifices of men and women involved with the legendary

633 SQUADRON IN WORLD WAR II

It is late autumn and the Admiralty are complaining that a high-flying Junker 86P is keeping a mysterious surveillance on Britain's eastern ports. Acutely aware, after the destructive arrival of the V1 and V2 rockets, that Germany is developing an entire range of secret weapons, London asks its agents in Scandinavia to check if any unusual enemy activity has been noticed there that would explain this German vigilance.

The answer is so serious that Churchill issues one of his rare ACTION THIS DAY directives. Davies volunteers his squadron for the task, only to learn too late that the difficulties and dangers are immense. A man has to be posted in Norway to aid the Squadron and Frank Adams, whose wife is making his life a misery, volunteers. Impressed by his record in Operation Valkyrie, Davies finally agrees.

Over in Norway, Adams meets Helga Lindstrom again, the woman he fell in love with during his last expedition in Norway. But he also has to face many hardships and dangers, not least the presence of the dreaded Gestapo.

How other sacrifices have to be made before the threat is removed are told in this latest chronicle of 633 Squadron, in which the author explores with his customary flair the skills and daring of the characters he created in the first of these famous novels and has so successfully developed in the whole dazzling series.

Frederick E. Smith (1919-2012) joined the R.A.F. in 1939 as a wireless operator/air gunner and commenced service in early 1940, serving in Britain, Africa and finally the Far East. At the end of the war he married and worked for several years in South Africa before returning to England to fulfill his life-long ambition to write. Two years later, his first play was produced and his first novel published. Since then, he wrote over forty novels, about eighty short stories and two plays. Two novels, 633 Squadron and The Devil Doll, were made into films and one, A Killing for the Hawks, won the Mark Twain Literary Award.