All in a Day's Work

This book captures a day in the lives of 45 Pilots serving in Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) between 1939 and 1970 including incidents World War II, Korea and Vietnam. Some days are routine but others are not, and the combination of individual pilot skill and good or bad luck on a particular day makes for interesting reading.

This book captures a day in the lives of 45 Pilots serving in Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) between 1939 and 1970 including incidents World War II, Korea and Vietnam. Some days are routine but others are not, and the combination of individual pilot skill and good or bad luck on a particular day makes for interesting reading. Included in this book are stories from fighter pilots, bomber pilots, transport pilots and seaplane pilots who were flying in England, Europe, Russia, North Africa, Italy, Canada, India, Burma, Ceylon, Malaya, New Guinea, Korea and Vietnam. Several of the stories include details of time spent as a POW camps in Germany, Singapore, Java, Burma, Japan, China and North Korea.

Jim Turner became interested in aircraft at an early age and when he was around six years old he visited the RAAF Base Richmond open day taking photos of aircraft using a Box Brownie camera. His interest in aircraft increased after watching the movie Reach for the Sky the story of WW2 fighter pilot Douglas Bader which gave him a desire to fly. Then almost three months to the day after his sixteenth birthday he took his first flight with an instructor in Sydney and just over two months later with a total 10 hours 55 minutes of dual instruction a flew solo for the first time in a Victa 115. Then he moved Melbourne and learnt to fly real aircraft the Mk III Auster and DH82 Tiger Moth and undertook aerobatics training. He flew a Cessna 172 to complete the long navigation flights to obtain his Unrestricted Private Pilots Licence when he was 18 and then learnt to drive a car when he was 20 years old. In 1996 he began writing and illustrating several books and in 1997 Kangaroo Press in Sydney published Australian Steam Locomotives 1896-1958. In 1998 as an imprint of Simon & Schuster Australia, Early Australian Steam Locomotives 1855-1895 was published followed in 1999 by the RAAF at War. In 2000 he was involved in publishing three children’s books he had written and illustrated Ellen the Echidna received the Dymocks Critics Choice award and was followed by Kylie the Kookaburra and Paulina the Platypus. In 2004 he had two books he had written and illustrated published by Pensoft in Bulgaria they were Frogs of Australia and Mammals of Australia. In 2010 he completed the manuscript of Garing His Pilot’s Log Books 1931-1945, this a day by day record of all flights recorded in the Log Books of Air Commodore W. H. Garing CBE, DFC, MID, DSC (USA) and he plans to publish it later in 2014. At the present time he is revising Prangs a 1,300 page day by day history of 30 Squadron RAAF (Beaufighter) from 1942-1945 with 1,100 photographs which he self published in 2013, doing all the artwork, layout, printing and binding himself. He has a number of ebooks planned for release in 2014..