Description
Title: Squadron Leader Owen Price, No. 8 Squadron’s Forgotten Hero – Being a Research Report about RAAF Beauforts and the Men who Flew in Them, the Story of “the Rabaul Episode’, an Expose of Denial of a Victoria Cross for Owen Price and a Cover-up to Launch the Campaign for Owen Price’s VC
Author: Bettiens, Roy
Condition: Very Good
Edition: 1st Edition
Publication Date: 1989
Cover: Hard Cover without Dust Jacket – 514 pages
ISBN: 0731676114
Comments: This book is a now scarce private published account of one of Australia’s most gallant pilots of World War II.
Squadron Leader Owen Price of No.8 Squadron RAAF was involved in combat against the Japanese over the skies of Rabaul in his Beaufort bomber.
The annals of the R.A.A.F. are rich with tales of gallant exploits by Australian pilots in their Australian-built bombers. One told with pride by members of a bomber squadron is the story of Squadron Leader Owen Price, who, single-handed, tackled a large concentration of enemy vessels in Simpson Harbour, at Rabaul.
Squadron Leader Price was flying over Rabaul at night and looked down on a cluster of eight enemy cruisers. With them were 14 destroyers and a dozen merchant vessels. He put his plane into a dive as searchlights blazed into his eyes and shellfire streamed up at him. Almost at water level he released his aerial torpedo, and saw it tear into the side of one of the largest vessels. Then his crippled plane shuddered and crashed into the sea. The odds against the lone pilot were tremendous, but he had scored a deathblow, and added another success to the long list credited to the Beaufort bomber squadrons.
Now and extremely scarce title.
