THE adventures of a York-born pilot in the Second World War have been charted in a new book.

The flying career of Jack Coleman is the subject of Liberators over the Atlantic, published by Fonthill Media, written by Jack himself, and compiled by his son Richard, who lives in Bransdale in the North York Moors.

Jack died in 1994, but not before he wrote this autobiography of his time flying long-distance over the Atlantic, hunting U-boats and protecting allied convoys.

“It’s more my dad’s book than mine,” says Richard. “It’s very much his story.”

Jack was born in York in 1919 and went to Archbishop Holgate’s. His father Harold had a construction business and sold wood to Airspeed on Piccadilly, who were building planes.

Jack knew from the age of 10 he wanted to fly.

“When the war broke out, he applied to be a pilot and got accepted,” Richard says, adding that the book contains a great deal of historical detail about York in the pre-War period and memories from the time.

There were tragic memories as well.

Jack went to Canada to train as a pilot. While he was there he saw a newspaper report about the bombing of York; the Baedeker raid.

He found out later that his dad Harold, an air raid warden, had been killed by a bomb.

Jack ended up in Iceland, flying and navigating on 16-hour sorties over the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans.

Navigation in an age before much of our modern radio equipment was a key skill he had to learn. Jack’s original title for the work was My Friends the Stars.

The book also features more personal memories of Jack meeting his future wife in Scarborough and eventually marrying her while over on leave.

Richard says the book will be of interest to anyone interested in aviation and local York history. He is currently working on a follow-up.