Tink's Tank

Tink's Tank is a work of fiction with a prologue, epilogue and 24 chapters that chronicles the adventures of the crew members of a U.S. Eighth Air Force B17 during WW II. The characters who serve in the combat/flying positions of the plane are described through backstories of each. The narrator tells his tale in response to a request from his granddaughter who is enrolled in a college course about the history of WW II. He tells her about each of his fellow crew members, the people they meet during their war time experiences in England, the locale for most of the story. There is a love interest for the narrator that develops with a volunteer at the Red Cross canteen and an eight year old girl shares her knowledge about Peter Rabbit with the story teller, a friendship grows through the years as they develop a lifelong penpal relationship. Crew members of Tank?s Tank find themselves involved in experiences in London and between themselves that shape and transform each as they fight to stay alive in air battles that test their courage and stamina as a crew. An assassination attempt, supported by the IRA, on the life of the famous English concert pianist Dame Myra Hess, bigotry directed towards the black ground crew chief, an emerging relationship between two of the crew members, sabotage, death and injury force their way into their lives as the crew of Tank?s Tank struggle to complete the thirty missions required for their tour of duty in the ETO. crew. It is more than a comingofage story and more than a story of the air war over Europe, for nothing happens in isolation of the people and events by which one is surrounded. It is the interactions and connections of events, people, fact and fiction that foment growth, change and deliverance from the past. Tink's Tank takes one on an adventure and returns the reader to postwar life through twists and turns in the epilogue.