Published by Penguin
In the closing days of World War II, Hitler summons SS General Ernst
Streicher to his Berlin bunker to discuss the Third Reich's only hope to win
the war - the Wonder Weapons controlled by Himmler's dreaded SS. When an
overnight raid by the Allies forces Streicher to abandon his
factory assembling V-2 rockets, it sets in motion a monstrous conspiracy that still lies hidden today.
In present-day Vancouver, the RCMP's Special X squad is on the hunt for a
pair of Nazi-inspired killers. A Nazi swastika is carved into each victim's
forehead. When Special X turns to the FBI for links to the swastika signature in the United States, the black world of the Pentagon picks up the clue, and ties it to the long-kept secret
of what crashed at Roswell, New Mexico in 1947.
Moving between wartime Germany and the manhunt in Vancouver, Swastika
revolves around a deadly four-sided cat-and-mouse game embroiling the
Mounties, Pentagon hit men, and the Nazi psychopaths.
Michael Slade - for SWASTIKA - is three generations of Clarkes. Joining Jay
Clarke and Rebecca Clarke is Flight Lieutenant Jack "Johnny" Clarke.
"Outward Bound" by Roy Nockolds.
Jack Clarke's Flying Log, inside the front cover.
Jack Clarke was born in Montreal in 1921. He was trained in Britain on
scholarship at the Southampton School of Art. On his return to Montreal, he
worked as an artist for Associated Screen News. In September 1940, at the
height of the Battle of Britain, he volunteered to fly with the Air Force
and was attached to the RAF.
Flight Lieutenant "Johnny" Clarke flew 47 combat missions against the Swastika.
The Desert, North Africa, July 1942 to January 1943
After attacking the Third Reich in Europe, including the Thousand Bomber Raids, he joined Middle East Command in July 1942. He fought in North Africa until the defeat of Rommel's Afrika Korps at the Battle of El Alamein.
The Desert Crew: Combat Photo of Clarke, and Clarke's Sketches of Walker, Rouse, Hallas, and Rycroft.
Second log page of The Battle of El Alamein
After the defeat of Rommel's Afrika Korps at the Battle of El Alamein, Jack Clarke returned to Britain in February 1943, and was posted to No. 6 (RCAF) Group in Yorkshire. There, he trained heavy bomber crews in the months leading up to the group's attack on SS-Major Wernher von Braun's V-2 rocket development and test site at Peenemünde on August 17 - 18, 1943.
Captain Jack Clarke died in a commercial plane crash in 1956, from engine
failure during a vicious winter ice-and-lightning storm in the Cascade
Mountains. His wartime Pilot's Log and WWII archives passed to Jay and
Rebecca Clarke in 2003.
SWASTIKA grew out of what they revealed.
Slade
