"Richard has produced a colourful memoir of his father’s brief service, supported by a nostalgic glimpse into the great conflict of century ago."

Society of Friends of the Fleet Air Arm magazine "Jabberwock"

This book is full of historical events and many wonderful photos, taken through the lens of one man’s pocket camera, Hugh Petty. Richard Petty has captured the thrills, tribulations, and courage that his father went through as a young Royal Naval Air Service pilot in the early days of aviation and warfare in WW1.

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Vintage Airfix

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Over the Front - Spring 2021 issue

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Cross and Cockade

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The de Havilland Moth Club Ltd

The book, published by Pen & Sword and released in 2014 on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the Great War, is a nice tribute from dr. Petty to his father, an aviator boy and a man of value in his hospital service. An unusual book but which is very pleasant and constitutes a unique testimony of a different war experience.

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On The Old Barbed Wire

Biographies of common individuals in uncommon circumstances often provide the necessary micro-prospective needed to understand times of conflict. The Boy Airman is partly that.

Over the Front, Autumn 2016 – The Boy Airman – reviewed by David Layton

It is the second section that contains the real value since Hugh Petty had a small camera and, against contemporary regulations, took a number of photographs of his aircraft and the ships from which they flew. Many of those reproduced in this section are rare. I certainly have not seen them before. There is also a facsimile reproduction of the cover and two pages from his pilot’s log book. The words of his 1927 speech give a tantalisingly brief but interesting description of his wartime career as a pilot including basic training at Crystal Palace, flying training and culminating with operations flying Sopwith one-and-a-half-strutters from Chatham, Inflexible and Marlborough. The descriptions of how sorties were flown spotting for the battleships’ big guns and the surrender of the German High Sea Fleet leave one wanting to find out more.

Australian Naval Institute - David Hobbs

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Yorkshire Gazette and Herald

'… this book, and the extraordinary photographs it contains, stands as a unique record of the early days of naval flying, and the terrible risks the young men of the Royal Naval Air Service took.'

The York Press

It is an extremely engaging retelling of a part of aviation history that is often overlooked.

FlyPast - March 2016

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Telegraph & Argus