Christopher Shores

Following the inter-Allied Casablanca Conference in January 1943 the outline for the Combined Bomber Offensive was agreed and resulted in early February with the 'Casablanca Directive'. This required the "progressive destruction and dislocation of the German military, industrial and economic systems and the undermining of the morale of the German people to a point where their capacity for armed resistance is fatally weakened". This directive was clarified in June when the Combined Chiefs of Staff issued the 'Pointblank Directive' that stated that the highest priority targets were the fighter aircraft factories to ensure that in the coming invasion of France the enemy would not have air superiority. When these directives were issued it was envisaged that as well as attacks by RAF Bomber Command and the US Eighth Air Force based in England, the strategic bomber forces in Italy would begin operations once suitable bases were available. After the Allied landings in Italy and resulting collapse of the Italian fascist regime a network of bomber bases was hastily developed. Thus, on 1 November 1943 the US Fifteenth Air Force was formed to conduct the daylight bombing offensive against strategic targets in southern Germany and across South-Eastern Europe. Key among which were the Rumanian oilfields and traffic along the River Danube. This new formation was joined by the smaller, but highly effective 205 Group, RAF that was trained and equipped for night bombing so mirroring their equivalent British-based formations. The damaging attacks on the Reich's oil supplies and the hugely effective Danube mining campaign conducted at night by 205 Group delivered huge strategic effect. The latter reduced vital oil and goods traffic into the Reich to a trickle but also dislocated the supply and logistics train into the southern part of the Eastern Front so giving manifest support to the Soviets. In this volume the early months of this hugely significant air campaign are described in minute detail, including the actions of Germany's Axis allies such as Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria that were encountered for the first time by the Western Allies. Description of the strategic bomber campaign in the Mediterranean theatre will conclude in Volume Seven.

During the final year of World War II, the defending Axis forces were steadily driven from southern skies by burgeoning Anglo-American power. This was despite the steady withdrawal of units to more demanding areas. In this fifth volume of the series the activities of the Allied tactical air forces in support of the armies on the ground – as their opponents were steadily extracted from northern Italy and the Balkans for the final defence of the central European homeland – are described in detail. The book commences with coverage of the final fierce air-sea battles over the Aegean which preceded the advance northwards to Rome and the ill-conceived British attempt to secure the Dodecanese islands following the armistice with Italy. The authors also deal fully and comprehensively with the advance northwards following the occupation of Rome, and the departure of forces to support the invasion of France from the Riviera coast, coupled with the formation of a new Balkan Air Force in eastern Italy to pursue the German armies withdrawing from Yugoslavia and take possession of newly freed Greece. The effect of the creation within the same area of the US and RAF strategic forces to join the Allied Combined Bombing Offensive is discussed. The final volume in the series will be concerned most especially with this latter campaign.

The fourth volume in this momentous series commences with the attacks on the Italian island fortress of Pantellaria which led to its surrender and occupation achieved almost by air attack alone. The account continues with the ultimately successful, but at times very hard fought, invasions of Sicily and southern Italy as burgeoning Allied air power, now with full US involvement, increasingly dominated the skies overhead. The successive occupations of Sardinia and Corsica are also covered in detail. This volume, then, is essentially the story of the tactical air forces up to the point when Rome was occupied, just at the same time as the Normandy landings were occurring in north-west France. In its pages are found what can justifiably be considered the story of `the soldiers’ air force’. Frequently overlooked by more immediate newsworthy events elsewhere, their struggle was often of an equally Homeric nature. With regards to the long-range tactical role of the Allied heavy bombers, only the period from May to October is examined herein, while they remained based in North Africa. Thus the period from November 1943 when the US 15th Air Force was formed to pursue the strategic air offensive against the Reich, together with the RAF’s 205 Group of night bombers, will be covered in a future (sixth) volume. Volume Five will deal with the rest of the tactical war in Italy and Greece, over the Adriatic and Aegean, and with the entry into the South of France to join forces advancing southwards from Normandy.

The third volume in this series returns to November 1942 to explain the background to the first major Anglo-American venture - Operation Torch, the invasion of French North Africa. It deals with the fratricidal combats which followed the initial landings in Morocco and Algeria for several days. It then considers the efforts made, unsuccessfully in the event, to reach northern Tunisia before the Germans and Italians could get there to forestall the possibility of an attack from the west on the rear of the Afrika Korps forces, then beginning their retreat from El Alamein. The six months of hard fighting which followed as the Allies built up the strength of their joint air forces and gradually wrested control of the skies from the Axis, are covered in detail. Then from 1 April 1943 the continuing story of the Western Desert Air Force is told from the point at which Volume 2 ended, as it advanced from the east to join hands with the units in the west. Now also described are the arrivals over the front of American pilots and crew, the P-38 Lightning, the Spitfire IX and the B-17 Flying Fortress and of the much-feared Focke-Wulf FW 190. The aerial activities over Tunisia became one of the focal turning points of World War II, yet this is frequently overlooked by historians. As before, the air-sea activities, the reconnaissance flights and the growing day and night bomber offensives form a major part of this volume. The mastery of the whole African coastline of the southern Mediterranean by the Allies prepared the way for the invasions of the European territories on the other side of this critical sea during 1943, which will be dealt with in Volume 4.

The first volume of this series dealt with the initial 19 months of the air war over the Western Desert of North Africa. This volume picks up the story as the 8th Army, following its hard-fought success in Operation Crusader, was forced back to the Gazala area, roughly mid-way between the Cyrenaican/Tripolitanian border of Libya and the frontier with Egypt.

*In depth review of Imperial Japanese Army Air Force fighter units and pilots. *Detailed study of equipment, operations from Pearl Harbor to kamikaze attacks, and pilots who achieved ace status. *Heavily illustrated with photos of pilots, aircraft, and unit insignia.

An illustrated history of how the British fighter developed, both single- and two-seaters. At the outset of World War I the British had some 110 assorted aircraft, used mostly for the visual reconnaissance role. With the advent of faster and more agile single-seaters, the Allies and their adversaries raced to outdo each other in the creation of genuinely effective fighters with fixed forward-firing machine gun armament. It was not until 1917 that the British developed a truly effective interrupter gear, which paved the way for excellent single seaters such as the Sopwith Triplane Camel and the RAF S. E.5., later joined by the Bristol F.2B - the war's best two-seat fighter. This volume traces the rapid development of the fighter in World War I and the amazing exploits of the British and Empire aces who flew them.