A NEW book is celebrating the history of Scotland's role in advancing aviation includes the horrors Clydebank experienced from planes in the Blitz.

"Scotland's Wings", by Robert Jeffrey, charts the victories and disasters with pilots, engineers and others.

He said Bankies and the Blitz could be summed up as "triumph and tragedy inn the skies".

Mr Jeffrey told the Post "Hitler made a serious mistake" in planning to bomb shipyards and break the spirit of the civilian population on March 13, and 14, 1941.

He said: "Looking back, the raid had almost the opposite effect. All of Scotland, not just the industrial areas, strengthened their resistance after such evil attacks on civilians.

"The resilience of the Bankies in the face of the horror that descended on Clydeside on those infamous spring nights won the admiration of the entire country.

"The scale of the bombing was horrendous. Around a thousand died and a similar number were injured and out of 12,000 houses only a handful were undamaged.

"The deadly bombs that tumbled out of the darkness on shipyards and tenement homes alike were a mixture of high explosives and incendiaries.

"It is said that pilots in the air as far away as Aberdeen saw the lights of the many blazes reflected on the clouds."

Mr Jeffrey said he watched the searchlights probing the sky on his way to the Anderson shelter in his back garden sitting on his father's shoulders.

His father-in-law would later recall his memories as an air raid warden seeing the debris of the Blitz the next day.

He said: "The world has moved on and the planes descending over a rebuilt Clydebank on final approach to Glasgow International these days are filled with tourists and businessmen. But the Blitz will never be forgotten."

Mr Jeffrey is a long-serving Glasgow journalist and the former managing editor of the Herald group of papers.

Past books include Glasgow's Hard Men, Glasgow's Godfather, and Gentle Johnny Ramensky.

Scotland's Wings is published by Black and White Publishing, out September 15.