The Road To Biggin Hill.: John Checketts.

HARDBACK "UNCOMMON," SHIPPED FROM THE UK* Edition: 1st. Thus. Amended & updated. * Impression: 1st.* Date of Publication: 2006 (1986) * Publisher: Grub Street Publishing.* Binding and cover condition: Black cloth, gilt title to spine only. No bumps or rubs, no visible faults. FINE.* Jacket condition: Mono photo illustrated dust wrapper showing Johnny Checketts in New Zealand Airforce Uniform. NOT PRICE CLIPPED, showing shelf price of £16.00. Green, white and maroon titles to face and white to maroon spine strip. No visible faults, now in clear un-attached protective wrapper. FINE * Contents condition: PRIVATE COPY NOT EX-LIBRARY. Clean, crisp, tight and bright with no reading wear, no marks to text, no visible faults. FINE.* Illustrations: One 8pp. block of b/w photos, with line drawn maps to end papers.* Pages: 174 pp. text. xviii pp. afterword, notes, bibliography, index & blank page at rear.* Description: Johnny Checketts, widely recognised as one of the great fighter pilots of World War II, was born and raised in Invercargill, South Island, New Zealand.Considered by the locals to be a dare-devil motorcycle rider in his youth, it was natural that in 1939 he should join the RNZAF, then undergoing rapid expansion to its wartime strength of 33,000 men. After achieving one of the highest scores of enemy aircraft destroyed in the Air War over the channel. He was shot down in September 1943 but avoided capture by the Germans with the help of the French Resistance - an absorbing story in itself. Rising to the rank of Wing Commander and having been personally decorated by King George VI, he returned to New Zealand after the war where he started his own business and then lived in happy retirement until his death in 2006 at the age of 94.* A FINE copy of the 1st./1st. thus with NO VISIBLE FAULTS. Dust jacket now in clear un-attached protective cover.*