RAF 8: Colonel Richard "Eager" Ernest Evans USAF
Colonel Richard "Eager" Ernest Evans USAF
Revised Book Review
upon Second Edition
November 2024
I
I first reviewed this biography in early 2023. The Biography is partly autobiographical, being written by Colonel Evans. Following his passing in 2006, Colonel Evans’s daughter Barbara Evans Kinnear, took on the formidable task of completing her father’s biography.
This is a biography of an American Air Force officer whose combat service spanned both the Second World War and the Korean War, reaching into the Cold War, by which time he had been promoted to full colonel.
In all walks of life, there are humble people who quietly get on with the job, work behind the scenes, yet by this inbuilt reticence have an enormous and powerful impact on all around them; in short, an immense force for good.
In all walks of life, there are also people who seem destined to always hold a grudge. A mistake is made, genuinely, not maliciously, but which in that type of person’s mindset firmly lodges. Thus, firmly lodged, it transposes itself into a ‘grudge’.
I mention this, because in reviewing the book, one question kept popping its head up on the page … why did Dick not reach star rank? Towards its end, I found the answer. Ah! Colonel Evans, very firmly in the former camp, had unfortunately brushed up against a bod in the latter camp. I understood all too well. So, I read the book afresh and with a new mindset. In truth, Richard was most certainly deserving of promotion to brigadier-general. And I suspect that a field marshal who also became Chief of the Imperial General Staff 1946-1948, Bernard Law Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein and to whom, for a short period during the North African Campaign, Captain Evans was his personal pilot, might also have spotted the anomaly.
But life goes on, time marches on.
II
In 2018, I visited the Yorkshire Air Museum, formerly RAF Elvington in North Yorkshire, and which had been home to the Free French Air Force during World War Two. It is often overlooked that the Free French Air Force flew as part of Royal Air Force Bomber Command in the Strategic Air Offensive against Nazi Germany.
At Elvington is a Handley Page Halifax. It is in superb condition, though not flyable. Granted access to the Halifax, along with the nephew of my uncle’s flight engineer, as well as the writer Peter Wilson Cunliffe, author of A Shaky Do - we three bods in typical RAF slang known as the three sombreros - I’ve yet to ascertain which of us labelled us so, but hey ho, boys will be boys and I really quite like it, for it keeps us firmly in the former camp - we all lost our uncles on that particular Shaky Do in April 1943.
III
Standing in the cockpit, the pilot’s seat just to my left where my uncle, Sergeant-Pilot Kenneth Ernest Webb, would have been, I asked various questions, sometimes trying to answer my own questions, as I wanted to learn as much as possible, and the one thing I’ve learned over a lifetime is that if I get the answer wrong or slightly adrift, the explanatory correction, not unlike applying a touch of left rudder or a minor flap adjustment, becomes indelible; always the best way to learn.
To one question, though, of what appeared to be a very insignificant switch to the left of the pilot’s left thigh, oh that? That’s the autopilot. We chatted on, but I kept having this niggling thought … Ken had an autopilot facility. Then, reasoning everything out in the way that Ken Webb junior tends to do … decided that it would have been embryonic but most certainly an indication not to glaze over the Pilot’s Notes for any RAF aircraft in WW2. Sure, they may be rudimentary, but the phrase cutting-edge technology was as exciting then as it is now. The phrase is with every generation, regardless of the century. It applied equally to aviation - on all sides - during the First World War.
IV
Let us now wind the clock forward to the Autumn (Fall) of 2021. Enter stage left, Richard “Eager” Ernest Evans. We are now three years on. I am reading about the cockpit of the B-17 Flying Fortress for which, courtesy of Colonel Evans and his daughter Barbara, I now seem to have developed a love affair. I am tremendously proud of all the four-engined heavys of the Royal Air Force and Commonwealth Air Forces ~ the mighty Short Stirling, the Handley Page Halifax, the remarkable Avro Lancaster and the dreaded Sunderland Flying Boat (dreaded by all U-Boat commanders) - as well as our twin-engined bombers, such as the Bristol Blenheim, the Bristol Beaufighter, the Handley Page Hampden, Fairey Battle and the Vickers Wellington, all of which were sold short in spec by an often idiotic Air Ministry, thus sending men to certain death by their amendments to submitted drawings.
And, of course, that absolute beauty, the de Havilland Mosquito, exemplar, tour de force, pathfinder, and the dread of enemy troops and panzers alike, and even more so the hated Gestapo in all the Occupied Territories and Nations that constituted the Third Reich.
Don’t even get me onto our fighters.
V
As I read one particular lengthy section, I found myself in RAF classroom mode. Because the lecturer, Colonel Evans, was giving me a one-to-one detailed explanation of the B-17’s autopilot; not only its normal use but how it is used in combat operations. My mind whizzed back to the cockpit of the Halifax. I began to obtain an understanding of that aircraft’s capability, as well as its lethal edge. I began to understand how the crew worked together even more than I’ve ever learned over a lifetime of study, reflection and practical application. Colonel Evans also gave me a very clear insight into the work of my parents’ brothers, one a Halifax pilot, the other a pathfinder flight engineer with the elite RAF Path Finder Force on Lancasters.
It is as if Colonel Evans is standing nearby, now listen up, everyone. …
And this is perfectly captured in the extensive images provided by the Evans Kinnear Family to Armin Braunsberger, the designer of the very powerful website relating to the book. The adjectives I use are deliberate.
VI
Thus, it is absolutely right that Colonel Richard Ernest Evans USAF is written here. I leave the rest, below, for the reader to check through, or not, as the pleasure takes you.
Now that is this book’s hallmark.
November 5, 2024
All Rights Reserved
LIVERPOOL and Gloucestershire
© 2024 Eyes to the Skies © 2024 Kenneth Thomas Webb
First Published March 30, 2023
Glossary
spec. Specification
Now that is this book’s hallmark.
Thus, it is absolutely right that Colonel Richard Ernest Evans USAF is written here. I leave the rest, below, for the reader to check through, or not, as the pleasure takes you.
Front Cover of Richard Eager A Pilot’s Story that is, within the United Kingdom, also now listed by the UK’s top Book Chain Waterstones.
“We are honored that writer Kenneth Thomas Webb has reviewed the “Richard Eager” book. As a retired officer with the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, Ken brings his unique knowledge of military and aviation history to all his writing and research.”
THIS book, written by Colonel Evans in 1993 but not published in his lifetime, is co-authored by his daughter.