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Ocean Bridge: The History of RAF Ferry Command. CARL A. CHRISTIE. Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1995. Pp. xx, 458, illus. $39.95
In 1939 long - range air travel was still a novelty, and transatlantic crossings were limited to a few routes where mild weather and good anchorages for flying boats could be found. The Second World War changed all that. The route pioneered by Alcock and Brown two decades before became a major air corridor between Europe and North America. Carl Christie's consummate piece of scholarship, Ocean Bridge, is the story of how service and civilian pilots, backed by a series of organizations known generically as the RAF Ferry Command, bridged the Atlantic, and how geography and war put Canada at the heart of this new air age.
Ocean Bridge is at least three stories rolled into one, and Christie has left few stones unturned in the research and telling. The first, and main, story is that of the establishment, growth, and development of Ferry Command itself. Ocean Bridge really begins with the decision by the British to order thousands of aircraft from the United States: about 26,000 by the summer of 1940, with the prospect of thousands more. It was, as Christie says, 'a logistician's nightmare.' Shipping aircraft by sea was time consuming, wasteful, and hazardous. What better way to send an aircraft to its destination than to fly it there? Ironically, senior air force officers were sceptical, especially of plans to fly the North Atlantic in winter....