Author: Paul Tweddle
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 0750989483
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 398
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Book Description
While the heroic exploits of 'The Few' of Fighter Command are rightly lauded, those of 'The Many' of Bomber Command often remain overlooked. Night after night, the bomber crews ranged across Europe seeking out and attacking targets in an all-out endeavour to undermine the German war effort against Britain and prevent invasion. Bomber Command's Forgotten Summer tells the stories of the young men who carried out dangerous missions on a nightly basis, battling against both the enemy and the elements, relying on a mix of nerve, skills and luck to hit their target and make it home. Faced with flak and fighters, exposed to the harsh weather conditions and operating at the edge of their capabilities, for the young men of Bomber Command, this was just as vital as the Battle of Britain.
Author: Max Hastings
Publisher: Quarto Publishing Group USA
ISBN: 1610588630
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 410
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Book Description
This award-winning classic of WWII military history chronicles the Royal Air Force’s bombing campaign against Germany. RAF Bomber Command’s air offensive against the cities of Nazi Germany was one of the most epic campaigns of World War II. The struggle began meekly in 1939 with only a few aircraft—Whitleys, Hampdens, and Wellingtons—flying blindly through the night on their ill-conceived bombing runs. It ended six years later with 1,600 Lancasters, Halifaxes, and Mosquitoes, equipped with the best of British wartime technology, blazing whole German cities in a single night. In Bomber Command, originally published to critical acclaim in the UK, famed British military historian Sir Max Hastings offers a captivating analysis of the strategy and decision-making behind one of World War II’s most violent episodes. With firsthand descriptions of the experiences of aircrew from 1939 to 1945—based on one hundred interviews with veterans—and a harrowing narrative of the experiences of Germans on the ground during the September 1944 bombing of Darmstadt, Bomber Command is widely recognized as a classic account of one of the bloodiest campaigns in World War II history. Winner of the Somerset Maugham Prize
Author: Martin Middlebrook
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1473834880
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 941
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Book Description
The essential WWII historical reference detailing RAF Bomber Command’s extensive campaign of strategic bombings across occupied Europe. The Royal Air Force Bomber Command's strategic bombing campaign started on the first day of the Second World War and ended five and a half years later with the final victory in Europe. It was a campaign of such enormous scale that historians have only recently begun to piece together the finer details of the individual raids. Aviation historian Martin Middlebrook and his research colleague, Chris Everitt, were the first to compile a complete review of all the raids and their background stories. The Bomber Command War Diaries not only documents every Bomber Command operation but also details their effects on the ground, drawing on local archives from Germany, Italy, and the occupied countries. It is a groundbreaking work on historical research, bringing together the two sides of Bomber Command’s war. This edition includes retrospective observations and a new appendix.
Author: Edward B. Westermann
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 440
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Book Description
Air raid sirens wail, searchlight beams flash across the sky, and the night is aflame with tracer fire and aerial explosions, as Allied bombers and German anti-aircraft units duel in the thundering darkness. Such "cinematic" scenes, played out with increasing frequency as World War II ground to a close, were more than mere stock material for movie melodramas. As Edward Westermann reveals, they point to a key but largely unappreciated aspect of the German war effort that has yet to get its full due.Long the neglected stepchild in studies of World War II air campaigns, German flak or anti-aircraft units have been frequently dismissed by American, British, and German historians (and by veterans of the European air war) as ineffective weapons that wasted valuable materiel and personnel resources desperately needed elsewhere by the Third Reich. Westermann emphatically disagrees with that view and makes a convincing case for the significant contributions made by the entire range of German anti-aircraft defenses.During the Allied air campaigns against the Third Reich, well over a million tons of bombs were dropped upon the German homeland, killing nearly 300,000 civilians, wounding another 780,000, and destroying more than 3,500,000 industrial and residential structures. Not surprisingly, that aerial Armageddon has inspired countless studies of both the victorious Allied bombing offensive and the ultimately doomed Luftwaffe defense of its own skies. By contrast, flak units have virtually been ignored, despite the fact that they employed more than a million men and women, were responsible for more than half of all Allied aircraft losses, forced Allied bombers to fly far abovehigh-accuracy altitudes, and thus allowed Germany to hold out far longer than it might have otherwise.Westermann's definitive study sheds new light on every facet of the development and organization of this vital defense arm, includi
Author: Richard Overy
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143126245
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 609
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Book Description
“An essential part of the literature of World War II.” —Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post From acclaimed World War II historian Richard Overy comes this startling new history of the controversial Allied bombing war against Germany and German-occupied Europe. In the fullest account yet of the campaign and its consequences, Overy assesses not just the bombing strategies and pattern of operations, but also how the bombed communities coped with the devastation. This book presents a unique history of the bombing offensive from below as well as from above, and engages with moral questions that still resonate today.
Author: Claudia Baldoli
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441159363
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 314
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Book Description
Forgotten Blitzes analyses how states and civil society in Vichy France and Fascist Italy reacted to the experience of Allied bombing between 1940 and 1945.
Author: Richard Worrall
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472846540
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 97
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Book Description
This illustrated study explores, in detail, the RAF's first concentrated air campaign of World War II against one of the hardest and most important targets in Germany – the industrial heartland of the Ruhr that kept Hitler's war machine running. Between March and July 1943, RAF Bomber Command undertook its first concentrated bombing campaign, the Battle of the Ruhr, whose aim was nothing less than the complete destruction of the industry that powered the German war machine. Often overshadowed by the famous 'Dambusters' single-raid attack on the Ruhr dams, the Battle of the Ruhr proved much larger and much more complex. The mighty, industrial Ruhr region contained not only some of the most famous and important arms makers, such as the gunmakers Krupp of Essen, but also many other industries that the German war economy relied on, from steelmakers to synthetic oil plants. Being such a valuable target, the Ruhr was one of the most heavily defended regions in Europe. This book examines how the brutal Ruhr campaign was conceived and fought, and how Bomber Command's relentless pursuit of its objective drew it into raids on targets well beyond the Ruhr, from the nearby city of Cologne to the Skoda works in Czechoslovakia. Drawing on a wide-range of primary and secondary sources, this is the story of the first titanic struggle in the skies over Germany between RAF Bomber Command and the Luftwaffe.
Author: Ken Delve
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1473812593
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 435
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Book Description
This is a comprehensive reference to the structure, operation, aircraft and men of Bomber Command from its formation on 1936 to 1968 when it became part of Strike Command. It includes descriptions of many notable bombing raids, the many types of aircraft used, weapons and airfields. The five main sections of the book include a general historical introduction and overview, operations, operational groups, aircrew training and technical details of each aircraft type. Lengthy Annexes cover personnel. the squadrons in World War II, accuracy of attacks, orders of battle for each wartime year, maps of airfields locations, tonnage of bombs dropped and nuclear weapons carried in the post-war years.
Author: Micheal Clodfelter
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476625859
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 825
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Book Description
In its revised and updated fourth edition, this exhaustive encyclopedia provides a record of casualties of war from the last five centuries through 2015, with new statistical and analytical information. Figures include casualties from global terrorism, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the fight against the Islamic State. New entries cover an additional 20 armed conflicts between 1492 and 2007 not included in previous editions. Arranged roughly by century and subdivided by world region, chronological entries include the name and dates of the conflict, precursor events, strategies and details, the outcome and its aftermath.
Author: Gordon A. A. Wilson
Publisher: Amberley Publishing Limited
ISBN: 1445690942
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 315
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Book Description
A complete history of Bomber Command, including its crucial role in WWII and later nuclear role in the Cold War.
