If there is one person that you can expect to deliver the goods it has to be Biggles. Seriously, we are talking about the guy who, according to Captain W.E. Johns, single handedly defeated the Germans in World War I, and by the way he is going in this collection of books that I am reading, seems to be on his way to produce a repeat performance in World War II. Together with his buddies Ginger and Algy they make up what is effectively a special forces outfit who have no problems going behind enemy lines to cause as much havoc as possible – and he certainly does that in this book.
Anyway, the British have a problem in that they need rubber and all of the rubber now happens to be located in Japanese held territory. So high command basically tells Biggles to fly over to Burma and bring some back. As well as successfully reopening a rubber route, he also manages to occupy a section of Southern Burma while sending the Japanese packing. In doing this he raids two Japanese outposts, bogs a handful of destroyers in an estuary, and and sinks two transports loaded with Japanese troops who happen to be heading in his direction to pretty much crush him and his band of jolly good fellows. Upon putting this book down I said to myself – gee, this must have put a huge dent in the Japanese's plans to create a Pacific/South East Asian Co-prosperity sphere.
Anyway, as I was reading this book I came across a number of planes that were mentioned that I had no idea what they looked like, and one of them happened to be a Gosling. So, being my curious self, I decided to type Gosling into Google so see what came up. Low and behold this is what my query returned:
Okay, that looks nothing like an aeroplane. So I decided to narrow my search down a bit and type in ''Gosling Airplane” and to my surprise Google decided to spit out this:
Maybe his middle name happens to be 'airplane' but somehow I doubt it. Anyway, after a few frustrating tries on navigating the Googlespehere I finally came across what I wanted, a picture of a Gosling, the type that Biggles and his band of airmen were flying across the Indian Ocean.
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