Displaying 1-10 of 34
Displaying 1-10 of 34
The intriguing thing about the battle between RAF Bristol Beaufighters and Kriegsmarine ‘Flak Ships’ is that one of the combatants fell into the role somewhat by accident, and the other didn’t really exist – at least not in the form that its adversaries understood.
Following the defeat of France in June 1940, the Germans built up a formidable array of fighter and bomber assets on French airfields in preparation for the planned aerial assault against the British Isles
Like many of my generation, I had relatives who had served in the RAF and the FAA during the Second World War and was brought up on stories of derring-do about dashing RAF pilots.
The airlift was one of the outstanding successes of the war, carrying 738,667 tons of supplies to China and ferrying 4,671 aircraft over a three-and-one-quarter year period. What made it even more remarkable was the starting point for the airlift was at the end of the world, literally for the United States.
As its military campaigns in the Philippines and Dutch East Indies successfully concluded in early 1942, Japan turned its attention eastward. Japan’s goal in the South Pacific was to secure a defensive perimeter to resist future Allied attempts to reverse its conquests in the Indies and Southeast Asia.
When the Kuwait Crisis broke out in 1990, it was the Jaguar force that was dispatched immediately to shore up the defences of Saudi Arabia. Despite training for a low-level war, the Jaguar pilots found themselves flying over Kuwait at medium-level once hostilities commenced.
In the months before D-Day, one overriding question presented itself to the Allied planners: how could the German Army be slowed in its reinforcement of the invasion area? If the Germans won the ‘battle of the build-up,’ then the Allied armies could, conceivably, be driven back into the sea.
The tension erupted into a crisis on 1 June 1948 when the western Allies announced the intention to form a new state in West Germany: on 23 June, the Soviets responded by closing land access to West Berlin, hoping to discourage the formation of the new state and perhaps in the hope that the western outpost deep within East Germany would capitulate.
Thomas McKelvey Cleaver's 'Clean Sweep' is now out in paperback! You can read an extract from Chapter One below.
By the second half of 1943, the skies over Britain were a dangerous place for the Luftwaffe. Attacks by daylight were rare due to the potency of the RAF while in attacks by night – even if the German crews were afforded darkness as protection – superior RAF nightfighters, much-improved radar and anti-aircraft guns wreaked a heavy price on the Luftwaffe.
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