Part of Series

Biggles

Series · 103 books

By Johns W E, W. E. Johns, Capt. W.E. Johns, and more

Biggles is sent to investigate the disappearance of aircraft over Africa. The aircraft contained V.I.P.'s who were carrying with them secret documents. Pretending to carry a V.I.P. in his aircraft, Biggles is forced to land in Liberia after a secret weapon causes his plane to suffer engine failure. The picture on the dust cover of the book is Biggles' plane coming down. Ginger is in Biggles' plane and he escapes into the jungle whilst Biggles is captured and taken to meet Christophe, a black American who is planning to set up a black empire in Africa. He has stolen a new American plane containing the secret weapon and is using it to steal secrets to sell to the highest bidder, in order to finance his scheme. Biggles is put in a prison compound with other prisoners taken from planes captured earlier. Biggles discovers that behind Christophe are Iron Curtain agents, including Von Stalhein and Zorotov (from Biggles in the Blue). Meanwhile Ginger has made contact with Algy and Bertie and Algy has flown back to base to get a smaller aircraft as there are difficulties landing in the rough terrain. Von Stalhein offers the captured Biggles wire-cutters to escape in a deal that would see him double crossing both Christophe and Zorotov, whom Von Stalhein later shoots. Ginger and Bertie however, have found where Biggles is and get the wirecutters off Von Stalhein. With these, all the prisoners escape and steal a plane to get away. Biggles, Ginger and Bertie remain to destroy the aircraft with the secret weapon. Biggles sabotages Christophe's radio and leaves him without communications. Von Stalhein flies off to an unknown destination but returns with a small army and attacks Christophe and his men. Biggles uses a petrol and oil dump to destroy the secret weapon. With this gone, there is no reason for Von Stalhein to remain. An exhausted Biggles and Ginger, together with an injured Bertie fly to safety when Algy returns and they take with them Christophe who they find has only been wounded in the attack.

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Author

W. E. Johns

Author · 119 books

Invariably known as Captain W.E. Johns, William Earl Johns was born in Bengeo, Hertfordshire, England. He was the son of Richard Eastman Johns, a tailor, and Elizabeth Johns (née Earl), the daughter of a master butcher. He had a younger brother, Russell Ernest Johns, who was born on 24 October 1895. He went to Hertford Grammar School where he was no great scholar but he did develop into a crack shot with a rifle. This fired his early ambition to be a soldier. He also attended evening classes at the local art school. In the summer of 1907 he was apprenticed to a county municipal surveyor where he remained for four years and then in 1912 he became a sanitary inspector in Swaffham, Norfolk. Soon after taking up this appointment, his father died of tuberculosis at the age of 47. On 6 October 1914 he married Maude Penelope Hunt (1882–1961), the daughter of the Reverend John Hunt, the vicar at Little Dunham in Norfolk. The couple had one son, William Earl Carmichael Johns, who was born in March 1916. With war looming he joined the Territorial Army as a Private in the King's Own Royal Regiment (Norfolk Yeomanry), a cavalry regiment. In August 1914 his regiment was mobilised and was in training and on home defence duties until September 1915 when they received embarkation orders for duty overseas. He fought at Gallipoli and in the Suez Canal area and, after moving to the Machine gun Corps, he took part in the spring offensive in Salonika in April 1917. He contracted malaria and whilst in hospital he put in for a transfer to the Royal Flying Corps and on 26 September 1917, he was given a temporary commission as a Second Lieutenant and posted back to England to learn to fly, which he did at No. 1 School of Aeronautics at Reading, where he was taught by a Captain Ashton. He was posted to No. 25 Flying Training School at Thetford where he had a charmed existence, once writing off three planes in three days. He moved to Yorkshire and was then posted to France and while on a bombing raid to Mannheim his plane was shot down and he was wounded. Captured by the Germans, he later escaped before being reincarcerated where he remained until the war ended.