- ID
- cx174
- Title
- Flying Beyond the Reach of Fear
- Genre
- Essay
- Page Count
- 3
- Word Count
- 1120
- Publisher
- Strand
- Publication Year
- 1944
- Document Types
- Full-text Online
- Eads, Additions to
- Flying Officer X Byline
- Added since 2020
- Topics
- Pilots, War
With the subtitle 'A Glimpse into the Fighter Pilot's Mind,' Bates explores the 'protective communal code of speech and manner' of Royal Air Force pilots that 'compels them roughly to be unimpressionable, inarticulate, self-effacing.'
He distinguishes fear as their dominant emotion: 'There has never been a pilot, I think, who under all that laconic exterior and monosyllabic speech, was not afraid, and who was not an infinitely better pilot and man because of it.'
One of only three non-fiction pieces with the 'Flying Officer X' byline (the others being 'On Equipment' and 'The First Squadron.')
The essay is accompanied by six drawings 'from life' by Olive Snell with the title 'Fighter Boys of a Famous County Squadron.'
In Strand (April, 1944, pp. 71-73, attached).
