The Crew

By: David Price

Narrated by: Peter McGovern

The Crew recounts the intimate, personal testimonies of Wing Commander Ken Cook, who served as Bomb Aimer with the Comans crew. The audiobook specifically follows Flying Officer Jim Comans and his crewmen from their enlistment as volunteers, through training and into operational service. The Comans crew flew 45 hazardous bombing missions - mostly deep into Germany at night - through the winter of 1943 to the summer of 1944.

At 95, Ken Cook is the crew's last survivor. Enlisting in the RAF Bomber Command at 19, his extraordinary story brings a moving insight into the bombing campaign. His experiences, particularly during the Battle of Berlin, highlight the extreme danger each bomber crew faced. With Bomber Command's casualty rate of over 44 percent, the book describes how the airmen overcame immense physical and mental challenges to survive. There are now very few surviving RAF Bomber Command airmen from the Second World War. The Crew will be one of the final eyewitness testimonies to a momentous time in our history.

©2020 David Price (P)2020 W. F. Howes Ltd

Interesting individual tales, challenged narration

There are some interesting personal stories recounted, but the author does not give much context for the training of the crew ('other' air crew spent as many weeks in training as pilots) never mentioning the Commonwealth Air Training Program, though recounting a specific US training program. The narrator has some challenges with proper-name pronunciation and acronyms; air crew fly with the "raaf" (as opposed to the R-A-A-F, or Royal Australian Air Force).

Leo McKinstry's 'Lancaster: The Second World War's Greatest Bomber' does a better job recounting the air crew roles and the huge challenge faced by crews attempting to bail out (far worse survival than the Halifax).

Tries to Cover Too Much

This book covers a most interesting topic, in describing pilot Ken Cook's experiences as a part of the Avro Lancaster crew that served as bombers between 1942 to the end of the war. But unfortunately the author tries to cram too much information into the book, going back to before WWII aviation history to the bombing runs of WWII, and back again. And there are other stories sprinkled in from ordinary citizens. That is all fine, it just makes it confusing and hard to follow. But overall, the book is very good and the narrator is excellent.