Author(s): Geoffrey Regan

Transport

Aerial warfare has removed the walls and moats with which mankind once protected itself from armies and navies, and has thus become the most destructive of all 'killing fields', threatening civilians and armed forces alike. Aviation blunders are therefore mainly serious in their implications, but Geoffrey Regan reveals eccentricity and incompetence alike in fearless fashion in Airforce Blunders, from Puggy Shone, the British Second World War pilot who delighted in dropping oranges and bogus bombs on German soldiers relaxing on a beach in Belgium, to the officer in charge of the state-of-the-art radar at Pearl Harbour who missed the significance of the blips on the screen which were the approaching Japanese planes, and uttered the immortal words, "Well, don't worry about it". In a world where no one is out of reach of aerial bombardment, it is as well to remember that aviation blunders can and do still occur today.