ABOUT THE BOOKS & THE AUTHORS
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DAVID W. EARL
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David`s interest in aviation history stems from the discovery of wreckage of a wartime bomber on moors close to his hometown of Stalybridge at the edge of the Derbyshire Peak District in 1972. In 1990 he began research on both this and other aircraft he had heard of that had crashed in the mountains of the UK and in 1994 self published a little booklet entitled `THEIR FINAL MISSION` covering stories on eight B-17 Flying Fortress losses.
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Further research and a number of articles submitted to newspapers and magazines led to two books on the subject, `HELL ON HIGH GROUND` volumes 1 & 2 published by Airlife Publishing Ltd in 1995 and 1999. Other books entitled `ALL IN A DAY`S WORK` on the pioneering days of RAF Mountain Rescue in Wales and `MUDVILLE HEIGHTS` about US Navy anti-submarine missions in Devon, were to follow, the latter published by his own small publishing company Hanover Publications, established in 2011 following redundancy from a career spanning 33 years in the printing industry.
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Though living in Cheshire, David has been visiting Scotland a for over 25 years and aside from his love of the isles and its people, has a great interest in the aviation history here. He is one of the founder members of the Aviation Research Group Orkney & Shetland, and for 10 years (2009-2018) he wrote articles, edited and published the quarterly magazine `The Argonaut` for the group. In 2011 David wrote a book entitled `ALMOST HOME`. It told the story of the American B-24 Liberator bomber that crashed at Walliwall,Orkney Isles in March 1945, with the loss of 13 crew and passengers and just one survivor.
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A boyhood Interest in cinematography and the classic movies also led to an interest in British director Michael Powell`s `THE EDGE OF THE WORLD` (1937) about the evacuation of Hirta, St.Kilda in the far Outer Hebrides. David visited the island of Foula, Shetland in 2006 and 2008, which was used as a location for the film and the result was a publication detailing all the cast and crew biographies in `THE EDGE OF THE WORLD -THEN & NOW` published in 2014. More recently he wrote `LOST TO THE ISLES` with the help from long time friend and fellow researcher Peter Dobson. This book series of four volumes covers in total 164 aircraft that met their fate on and around the Scottish Isles. Research took well over a decade and most importantly, aside from the actual events leading up to the accidents, the stories contain biographies of all the crews and passengers involved. In 2018 he wrote `DEADLY PENINSULA` a single volume detailing aircraft lost on and around Kintyre, Argyle, again with assistance from Peter Dobson and in 2020 he completed volume 1 of `DOWN IN THE HIGHLANDS` - Aircraft accidents and incidents in Caithness, Sutherland and Ross & Cromarty 1939-1942 and in 2022 `DOWN IN THE HIGHLANDS 2, also a little book on local airmen on his hometown war memorial entitled `THE STALYBRIDGE AIRMEN`.
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PETER DOBSON
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Peter, who lives in Workington, Cumbria, has been researching aircraft losses for around 35 years. He first became interested in aircraft at an early age whilst on a school trip to RAF Silloth in the late 1950s. As a keen fell walker in the 1970s he often used to discover the remains of crashed aircraft in the Cumbrian Mountains and with limited resources and textbooks on the subject available back then, he began conducting his own research with visits to the RAF Museum and MoD in London to search the archives.
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Peter`s interest in aviation led to him becoming the co-founder of the Cumbrian Aviation Society. He has worked with number of local air museums over the years and has written numerous articles for aviation magazines. His friendship with David for the past 26 years, led to his interest in the Scottish Islands book project and to the research and writing of some of the accounts for the `LOST TO THE ISLES` books and `DEADLY PENINSULA`.
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Peter is a member of the Aviation Research Group of Orkney & Shetland and is a regular contributor to the quarterly group magazine `THE ARGONAUT` writing articles on air losses involving Orcadians and Shetlanders in WW2. More recently he worked with David on `DEADLY PENINSULA` detailing military aircraft lost on and around Kintyre and `DOWN IN THE HIGHLANDS` Volume 1 in 2021 and DOWN IN THE HIGHLANDS 2` just published in 2022 and is currently compiling information for work with David on volume 3 of the latter series.
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