Going Solo



Roald Dahl


ISBN: 0-224-02407-8


208 pages

Black & White photographs, maps, telegrams and other memorabilia
Hardback





”Going Solo" is the second part of Roald Dahl’s autobiography, which picks up where "Boy" leaves off with Roald on his way to East Africa to take up a job with the Shell Oil Company in Dar es Salaam, where he encounters, in his own words, ‘the curious characters that ran the British Empire’. Dahl is in Africa when World War II breaks out and he leaves Shell to join up with the RAF, enlisting in the RAF in Nairobi and carrying out his flying training there and in Habbaniya. This book details Dahl's wartime exploits with 80 Squadron, which include having a luger pointed at his head by the leader of a German convoy, crash-landing in no-man's land (and sustaining injuries that entailed having his nose pulled out and shaped!) and even surviving a direct hit during the Battle of Athens, when he was sufficiently recovered to fly again – this time in Hurricanes.


Although 208 Squadron is not mentioned in this book, Dahl’s exploits with 80 Squadron mirror those of 208 at the time in the evacuation from Greece and return to operations at Abu Sueir, Haifa and Ramat David.


The book is superbly written by a true storyteller and provides a fascinating insight into air operations at the time when 208 Squadron was in both Greece and the Middle East. It is highly entertaining and thoroughly recommended.



Published by

Jonathan Cape

32 Bedford Square

London

WC1B 3EL

1st printing 1986

Reprinted 1987