Excellent book with truly dramatic descriptions of WW1 flying and ground wars and their impacts on British class structure.

Like most others I know of who have read Derek Robinson's novels of British fliers in WWI and WWII, I think him far and away the best writer on the subject. With relentless humor and realism he gets us to imagine what it was like to be pretty certain you were going to die there, just unsure when.

And he is unsparing of staff leadership that didn't have a clue. In Robinson's war, you fly to kill people--neither more nor less--or die yourself.

I like this novel of the 1918 campaigns a bit less well than the hard-to-find Hornet's Sting about the early war, 1915, in which the humor, suitable to the absurd reality really works. But I like it better than his best known and very good WWII book about the RAF in the Battle of Britain stripped of myth, A Piece of Cake. It is a shame that his books aren't more easily available.

It is still the same today...and probably always will be.
Retired USAF Pilot (220 combat missions per war)

I thought maybe I was alone in thinking about the indelible image that this book leaves.
Back in the summer of 1973 when at the age of 15 I read this book it captivated me in such a way that I immediately read it again upon finishing it.
I remember thinking ah! here we have something like the truth behind the glorious legends of WW1 air fighting.
Air warfare was always in our house with my father being a WW2 pilot and indeed his father serving in WW1, but something never felt right about the stories and I began to realise the sheer terror that tinged every anecdote which always came out after a few drinks at family gatherings.

Read this book and consider the world of Major Woolley.

It's closer to the truth than you might think. Cheers! Mines a Guinness.

This book tell the air war in WWI as it really was. Ruthless, brutal, terrifying and a sheer waste of human life. You hear many stories - mainly propoganda about the dashingness, chivalry and adventurous life of the "Knights in the air". This novel puts it all to shame through the leader of Goshawk Squadron Major Woolley. Wolley although only 23 is already a hardened vetran and realist about fighting and tries to drill his rookies into "winning" not "surviving" - he even bans the use of words like fair, luck and chivalry. One of the trainees in the novel sums him up - "Richards suddenly understood. Richards saw that Woolley was trying to do more than train them, and lead them, and pass on the lessons of experience: he was also struggling to turn each of them into the kind of person that he himself had become: When Wolley instructed them in shooting the enemy in the back he was not being melodramatic, he really meant it, because Wolley was a professional. The amateurs played at fighting: they kept their scores and rejoiced in their adventures, and they were brave, good-humoured warriors. But Wolley took it seriously. He had asked the ultimate question - what was it for? - and got the obvious, the only answer. You flew to destroy the enemy. You did not fly to fight, but to kill. It was neither fun nor adventure nor sport. It was business".

Woolley was not your typical "la-de-dah" flying officer of the "Jolly Good Show old chaps" - he was rough, brash and hated all that pompousness. A highly amuzing part of the story is when the new HQ Commander a Colonel call Hawthorn comes down to visit the airfield and lecutres Woolley on his requisition of supplies of alcohol and silk scarves. Woolley shoots the mans briefcase and the cap off his head and threatens to kill him unless he delivers the supplies - Alcohol is needed to stop the pilot from getting the runs becuase of the stink of the engines and to stop them thinking what they do all day, and they need the scarves to go round the neck to "lubricate" as the head turns all the time. As Woolley tell the stunned Colonel "They need the booze to stop them thinking what they do all day. And you, you po-faced runt, you've no idea what they do".

Read this book and your thoughts on the WWI air aces will never be the same again, but you'll love it.

I'm no military scholar, but I do know brilliant fiction--and this is definitely an example. I've read this book twice and was entertained, excited, and moved by the story both times. If you like good character study, adventure, and humor (often quite grim!), give this book a try! I also recommend Robinson's novel "Piece of Cake."

Goshawk Squadron is very accurately described in the reviews above (or below). While the tale is a brilliant war story, accurate and rivetting, it is, like all of Robinson's work deeply antiwar. The stupidity and futility of war could not be clearer.

The writing quality should be used as a model for all aspiring novelists. Everything is perfect.

Finally, you as reader, need to answer a question after you read the first chapter. Did yo it serious? Funny? Rolling on the floor, laugh out loud funny? If not the last, you're too tightly wound, and must immediately read all of Robinson's work. That should cure you of most ailments. He's that consistent, and that good.

Derek Robinson wrote Goshawk Squadron in 1971 and began his depiction of squadron life in the Royal Flying Corps (later Royal Air Force). Unlike his later novels that focused on the fictional "Hornet" squadron, this first effort focused on the "Goshawk" squadron, but the method and characters are essentially similar. The main protagonist in Goshawk Squadron is the unit commander, Major Stanley Woolley. This character is clearly defined as an anti-hero, indeed his behavior and methods may appear repugnant or even borderline insane. However, Robinson succeeds in developing an odd pathos behind Woolley and over the course of the novel the reader should gain understanding of the forces that drive this odd character, if not empathy for him. Modern-day military officers might benefit from studying the command methods of Woolley, particularly in preparing units for combat. Overall, Goshawk Squadron is a true classic that delivers vivid characters and action that draws the reader further and further into the realities of air combat in the First World War.

Goshawk Squadron is set in the period January-March 1918, just before the German spring offensives. The squadron is equipped with the SE-5a fighter and begins the novel resting and re-building behind the lines. Woolley has been commander of the squadron for one year and although fanatical in his training methods, he is approaching combat burnout. Indeed, Woolley is so cynical (but realistic, as it turns out) that he believes all his pilots will be dead within three months. In a seemingly futile but rabid effort, Woolley spends the brief period behind the lines to train his squadron to be the most cold-blooded and efficient killers possible. Woolley's combat ethics clearly clash with the English public school morals of his young pilots; Woolley bans words like "sporting," or "fair fight" from his squadron. In these pages, Robinson depicts how four years of harsh, non-stop combat have produced a killer elite in men like Woolley, whose only philosophy is "kill or be killed." To modern eyes, Woolley's training methods will seem callous and cruel, resulting in needless pain and suffering on his pilots. Indeed, Woolley terrorizes his pilots, to include throwing beer bottles and shooting at slow learners. The pilots in Goshawk Squadron hate their commander, but they are also better prepared to survive when they return to operational service. When the great German offensive begins in March 1918, Goshawk Squadron is committed to try and stem the German onslaught as the British front line crumbles. Robinson provides excellent detail both on balloon-busting and close air support attacks, circa 1918.

Woolley does begin to evolve over the course of the novel, as do his pilots. Yet Goshawk Squadron is never a happy unit and modern military readers might question whether the increase in unit efficiency is worth the drop in morale. Woolley makes better killers, but the squadron is visibly falling apart by the end of the novel. Can a combat unit really function for long based merely on fear of the commander? And what is the result when that long-punishing tyrant suddenly decides to ease up on his troops? These questions are never fully addressed by Robinson, but remain lurking in the corners. On the other hand, one of the great scenes in the novel is a confrontation between Woolley and a REMF colonel from headquarters. Unlike other military novels that attempt to portray the clash between the war fighter and rear echelon types, there is no effort toward subterfuge by Woolley. Instead, Woolley starts blasting away at the colonel with his pistol until he wins the argument ("You can't kill me," says the colonel. "I will kill you, take your body up in my plane, and dump it behind German lines," says Woolley. In a war where thousands disappeared without a trace, this is a convincing threat.). Robinson's point here is that it is difficult to threaten a man with theoretical punitive actions when he is facing the very real threat of death in combat on a daily basis. Advice to REMFs: don't go to the front line in a war and threaten combat soldiers with administrative actions, if you do, wear a flak jacket.