Bruce Barrymore Halpenny (1937 – 3 May 2015) was an English military historian and writer, specializing in airfields and aircraft, as well as ghost stories and mysteries. He was also a broadcaster and games inventor.
Early life Halpenny's father was a Canadian First World War soldier who fought at Vimy Ridge, and his mother was a British First World War munitions worker from Lincolnshire. Bruce himself was from Lincolnshire, England.
Military career Halpenny served in the Royal Air Force Police (RAFP) in specialist units, often overseas. In the 1950s, whilst in the RAFP, he was wounded and had to undergo several operations to save his hand and arm. After being wounded, he moved across to the RAF Police on Special Security Duties (Atomic & Chemical Weapons), and was part of a special RAF military police unit in the Nuclear Division, responsible for protecting the nuclear weapons to be used by the V bombers in times of war.
Literary career In rehabilitation from his wounding during RAFP service, he started writing and research as a hobby, before turning it into his profession in later years after leaving the forces.
Early years In the early period of his writing career, Halpenny started out by writing love stories and cowboy stories for the American market under pen names. Because of his specialist knowledge of the Royal Air Force, he began to focus on military history, especially that of the RAF in the Second World War, often with deep insights, facts, and personal human interest stories. At one time, he was writing articles for up to 14 military journals around the world, when he was approached by the publishers Patrick Stephens to write the Airfield books due to his vast knowledge and authority.
Military history When he researched the British RAF airfield histories, particularly those of London, Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, Halpenny found that public records held very little, if any, information so he had to do all the research himself going back to the very beginning. This helped to unearth a rich source of information, which others have since used, and made Halpenny an undisputed RAF expert. For his research on the airfields, Halpenny interviewed 1,400 people, researched records and letters, and traveled thousands of miles. Halpenny visited each and every airfield he wrote about (some of which he had prior knowledge of from his military days) to ensure accuracy. His books quickly became essential reference books for all aviation historians. Virtually all of the information was new, in the sense that it had not appeared in the dozens of books which had been written about the RAF, new too were the many photographs that were just a selection of the thousands he collected and commissioned. In the opening chapters of his book Action Stations 2 Wartime Military Airfields of Lincolnshire and the East Midlands, there were a selection of control tower photos – this was the first time this had been done in any book. He also wrote various military themed books from such as English Electrical/BAC Lightning to Wartime Poems. He specialized in the British jets, English Electric Lightning, English Electric Canberra and Avro Vulcan.
English Electric/BAC Lightning The English Electric/BAC Lightning (ISBN 978-0-85045-562-5) is an aviation book by British military historian and author Bruce Barrymore Halpenny about the English Electric Lightning. It was published by Osprey Publishing as part of their Air Combat series. It was a best seller in Grimsby, the home town of the Lightning. The author spent nine months researching the Lightnings with the pilots of 5 and 11 Squadrons and Binbrook's own Lightning Training Flight. To gather information for the book, the author talked to men like, Sqdn Ldr Dave Carden (with 3,000 plus hours, the most experienced Lightning pilot in the world) and fellow pilots and ground staff. The book itself gives an insight into the workings of RAF Binbrook, its Lightnings, and the men that fly and maintain them. Sqdn Ldr Dave Carden takes the reader on a typically "hair-raising mission", while another section is devoted to a pilot's experiences when his aircraft caught fire and crashed into the sea off Flamborough Head in 1981. It also deals with the Quick Reaction Alert shed, where two fully armed Lightnings and their pilots were on constant standby to intercept Russian aircraft which used to sometimes fly to within 100 miles of Spurn Point.
To Shatter the Sky To Shatter the Sky, subtitled Bomber Airfield at War, is a book and also a BBC television programme of the same name by the military historian, author and screenwriter Bruce Barrymore Halpenny. The author was already working on the book when he was approached by the BBC to produce a related theme for a history programme, hence the book and programme sharing the same name. The programme was aired on BBC1 in late 1983 and the book launched in early 1984. The book (ISBN 978-0-85059-678-6) tells of the day-to-day activities at bomber stations between 1939 and 1945, where the author had meticulously researched his material. It draws extensively on reminiscences from surviving crew members who served at stations such as Waddington, Scampton, Skellingthorpe, Binbrook, Fiskerton, Bardney, Woodhall Spa, and many others. The book also recalls the stories of those that did not survive or were shot down over enemy territory. A routine flight from RAF Skellingthorpe that turned into a nightmare, and memories of raids on Nuremberg, Düsseldorf and Hamburg, where airmen watched their comrades shot out of the sky by a barrage of deadly enemy flak, all help to paint a picture of what it was like to be an airman based in wartime England. The book was the basis for a BBC television programme with the same title, which plots the history and present conditions of seven RAF and USAF airfields in the East Midlands. Halpenny scripted the programme and merged wartime film footage with up-to-date shots. The film cameraman was Dick Kursa, the film editor was John Rosser, and the producer was Mike Derby. First shown on BBC1 at 10.15pm on 11 February 1983.
Little Nellie 007
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