To show solidarity among the unlikely capitalist-communist Alliance, Winston Churchill and Bomber Command planned a massive aerial bombardment of German territories.

While that event inspired the use of two teen-aged Danes as his primary characters, the story of the photographing of the German radar station and flying the film to Britain was actually that of Thomas Christian Sneum, a Flight Lieutenant in the Danish Naval Air Service, who made the flight to Britain on 21 June 1941 in a Hornet with Keld Peterson, the mechanic who helped him rebuild it.

The Freya radar that Harald investigates was part of the Kammhuber Line, the German night air defense system along the North Sea.

The strict Protestant community in which Harald Olufsen grew up and against which he rebels in the earlier part of the book is typical of those dominated by the religious movement known as "The Church Association for the Inner Mission in Denmark", of which West Jutland is a stronghold.

Harald's nemesis, Danish Police Detective Peter Flemming, is a childhood acquaintance, formerly his older brother's best friend, he had turned into bitter enemy after an earlier falling out between the families.

The struggle which Harald and his friends wage, making enormous sacrifices, is morally ambiguous: they are, in essence, willing to lay their lives on the line so that the British will be able to bomb German cities.

The publication of Hornet Flight generated some controversy when a Royal Air Force veteran residing in Zimbabwe wrote to Follett about a character mentioned only in the prologue, "Charles Ford" - a black RAF officer.

Ulric Cross, a black former RAF squadron leader[1] and the man on whom the character of Charles Ford was based, refuted Frampton's claims in an article published in the Trinidad Express.