Few aircraft encompass as many contradictions as the Fairey Swordfish - the legendary Stringbag naval torpedo bomber was approaching antiquation at the start of the war yet struck mortal blows against some of the most powerful battleships in the Axis fleets. Naval Aviation historian Matthew Willis explores how modern technology such as radar ......
The RAFs continuing role in the projection of air power in the defence of the United Kingdom and its overseas interests since the end of the Second World War is well known. However, the same cannot always be said about the Royal Navys Fleet Air Arm (FAA), in part due to the ten-year gap between the retirement of the Harrier and the arrival of ......
Fighter pilots! Images of Baron Manfred von Richthofen and Eddie Rickenbacker in the Great War, Johnnie Johnson, Robert Stanford Tuck and Richard Bong in the Second World War, or Robin Olds in Vietnam, all spring to mind. Volumes have been written about them, past and present. Understandably, most of these revolve around the skill, cunning and ......
While large numbers of aeroplanes had been produced In America for the war effort overseas at the Western Front, it was found that that the British, French and Germans were far ahead of them when it came to flight technology, which led to a huge surplus of aeroplanes in the United States. The governments solution to recover some of the money ......
Flight Lieutenant David Moore Crook DFCs original Spitfire Pilot ranks among the finest first-hand accounts published during the Second World War, particularly for a Battle of Britain airman. It rightly remains a sought-after classic.
A Spitfire pilot during the epic aerial battles of the summer of 1940, DMC became a ......
A riveting tale of persistence, innovation, and the incalculable wages of war, from the international bestselling author of Talking to Strangers and host of the award-winning podcast Revisionist History Most military thinkers in the years leading up to World War II saw the airplane as an afterthought. But a small band of idealistic strategists ......
The AIF and the Hundred Days Battlefields such as Gallipoli, Fromelles, Pozières, Bullecourt and Passchendaele are burnt into the Australian Great War psyche. Unfortunately the sheer guts, fortitude and sacrifice of the diggers in those battles had often been wasted by poor leadership and planning. From an Australian perspective, such sacrifice ......
Fighter pilots! Images of Baron Manfred von Richthofen and Eddie Rickenbacker in the Great War, Johnnie Johnson, Robert Stanford Tuck and Richard Bong in the Second World War, or Robin Olds in Vietnam, all spring to mind. Volumes have been written about them, past and present. Understandably, most of these revolve around the skill, cunning and ......
This is the story of Lincolnshire farmer David Cundalls quixotic quest to unearth dozens of Spitfire fighters he believes were buried at the end of WWII. Armed with a high-tech survey showing mysterious shapes under the sunbaked surface of Yangon Airport, Davids expedition is equipped with state of the art JCB excavators, supported by a crack ......
At the end of the First World War, there were 270,000 demobilised Australian soldiers in Europe. Getting them home after the Armistice was a task of epic proportions that would take more than two years. In the meantime, how to keep these disgruntled, damaged men with guns occupied? In a word: sport. The Oarsmen tells the story of the servicemen ......