As long ago as 1961 a young Terry Parsons, then still in his twenties, began his long search for lost aircraft and memories of the Battle of Britain and the Blitz. What he discovered over the decades that followed went far beyond the tangled wreckage of military aircraft, both fighters and bombers. For with each of the thousands of RAF and Luftwaffe artefacts he unearthed, came the intricate weave of life stories linking the valiant and the brave, the living and the dead. Included among the items he has recovered from the many wreck sites he has investigated, was a mud-cloaked control column from a Spitfire with its gun button still switched to firing mode, a piece of Dornier Do 17 fuselage bearing the fatal bullet holes which led it to crash to the of earth of south-east England, a pilot’s waistcoat once used to stop the drafts and rattles in a Hurricane cockpit, blood-stained maps from a Luftwaffe bomber, and a buckled tail fin from a Me 110 bearing the unmistakable symbol of the swastika. Now in this exclusive biography, created from Terry’s original notes and photographs stretching back almost seventy years, we learn not only about the historical significance of his own story as a wreck-hunter but the importance of remembering the lives of the men who fought in the skies above Britain in those desperate days of the Second World War. Indeed, this book shows us how one man’s pioneering commitment to aviation archaeology ultimately serves as a unique tribute to thousands of young souls both lost and found of the Battle of Britain and the Blitz.
