Operation Defiant — Frederick E. Smith

January 1945 and American Flying Fortresses are being savaged by Germany's revolutionary jet, the Messerschmitt 262. With no fighter that can match them, and unable to discover where they are being built, General Staines of the USAAF asks his old acquaintance, Brigadier Simms of Special Operations Executive if his underground organisation will help.

Simms agrees and decides to use his two best men, Hausmann and Meyer, ignorant of the fact that during Operation Crisis they killed two Gestapo agents whilst helping a resistance fighter escape. If Hausmann and Meyer are captured they will be sent to the concentration camp set aside exclusively for German defectors . . .

The outcome is as unexpected as it is exciting in this latest chronicle of 633 Squadron. Handled with the authenticity and flair for which he is famous, the author provides a feast as rich as any 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.