Featured in

The de Havilland Aeronautical Technical School Association Newsletter No. 83, Summer 2022

As Featured in

Model Aircraft Monthly, December 2021

The memoirs continue to come out and this one is a very readable account of someone who started in 1940 training as a wireless-operator/air gunner and became involved in Al radar before going to 219 Squadron at Tangmere and Beaufighters.
From there, he went to Honeybourne in preparation for ferrying the first Beaufighters to the Middle East, having done a navigation course. After an unhappy period in Egypt he took one of the 1435 Flight aircraft to Malta as the island's first night defence.
While operating in very difficult conditions during the German blitz on Malta, he managed to navigate his Beaufighter to where the GCI station said there was 'trade' then used Al to position his pilot where he could press the trigger. Having shot down five enemy night bombers this way, the pilot was awarded DFC. The navigator got nothing. It was later found out that the combat records submitted by the pilot never mentioned having a navigator/radar operator aboard!
Conditions were hard for everyone on Malta in the first half of 1942 and eventually after attacks of dysentery and general malnutrition, he was evacuated on a Lodestar to Egypt. There he boarded the 'Queen Mary' and proceeded on what seemed a luxury voyage to Cape Town, Rio de Janeiro and New York before going to a transit camp in Canada to await transport in a convoy to the UK.
His next squadron was No.604. After night patrols over Normandy, and a few more kills, he got his DFC and ended up as a flight Lieutenant.
This is a good account of a wartime career and the snags that came up during it. Starting out as an AC2, he met the resistance of the old-established regime during interviews, who could not envisage the son of a bus driver, and with a yorkshire accident, ever fitting into the Officers' Mess. Fortunately this was not the rule at squadron level but he left the RAF in 1946.

Bookshelf

Dennis Gosling joined the RAF on 24 May 1940. It was the start of a fascinating wartime career. The author explains that through this autobiography he wants others to relive his "experiences as they happened... I want them to feel the joy and the pain, share the laughs and the heartache, take pleasure in the triumphs..." it is an aim in which he has succeeded.

Britain at War

This is a good account of a wartime career and the snags that came up during it.

Aeromilitaria, Summer 2010

Well written biography of a Beaufighter (later Mossie) nav rad in Malta and later over NW Europe. Good read (I found his accounts of night fighting over Malta particularly interesting).

Airmail, October 2010

A particularly interesting account and an intriguing work.

Ned Middleton

A very enjoyable read.

Big Dud

Compelling...It is a quietly heroic tale of great courage.

Freemasonry Today

I have read the transcript of this book, and found it to be an excellent read. It starts with Dennis life as a school boy, and him joining the RAF against the wishes of his parents.
Dennis takes you though his life in the RAF to Malta, and the hardship & turmoil that followed.
A truly magnificent achievement, and I was totally enthralled by the transcript.

via Website

I have read the transcript of this book, and found it to be an excellent read.

It starts with Dennis life as a school boy, and him joining the RAF against the wishes of his parents.

Dennis takes you through his life in the RAF to Malta, and the hardship & turmoil that followed.

A truly magnificent achievement, and I was totally enthralled by the transcript.

Alan Williams