Dangerous Skies

The Blitz. London 1941. Forgotten by their schools, left to fend for themselves by fathers at war and mothers overwhelmed, thousands of the city’s children run wild in its rubble-filled streets. Tommy’s older brother has gone AWOL and taken refuge in the attic. Wilkie’s abusive, alcoholic father poses a threat of violence more real than anything a German bomber can do. Alan wakes to play among the bombsites and burned-out houses, haunted by nightmares of yesterday’s horrors—and the fear of tomorrow’s. Working class south London is just trying to survive. A gang of looters recruits the three boys to ransack abandoned houses for goods they can sell on the black market. Schooling has all but stopped and it’s good fun and the added bonus of extra food. But when the police start closing in, Alan, Tommy and Wilkie are ordered to act as accomplices, distractions, and finally as human shields. Facing capture and imprisonment, the boys try to quit... only to discover that, in the gang’s reckoning, the only way out is death. Full of humanity and evocative of its past, Dangerous Skies is an adventure that brings to life both the terrors of the Blitz and the desperate ways in which people coped with those terrors every day of their lives. Authentic and heartwarming but without any jingoism, this is the family version of SAS Rogue Heroes.