![[Book #82880] The Battle of the V Weapons 1944-45. Basil Collier](/images/noimage.png)
The Battle of the V Weapons 1944-45
New York: William Morrow & Company, 1965. Presumed First U. S. Edition, First printing. Hardcover. 191, [1] pages. Occasional footnotes. Illustrations. Maps. Diagrams. DJ has some wear, tears and soiling and is in a plastic sleeve. Chronological Summary. Appendix: V.1 and V.2. Bibliography and Sources. Index. Basil Collier (1908–1983), full name John Basil Collier, was a British author of books of military history, particularly military aviation, World War II and military and political strategy. Collier became a full-time professional writer in 1932. Before the war he was a novelist, travel writer, critic and broadcaster. He was in the Royal Air Force from 1940 to 1948, as a staff officer in Fighter Command to 1944. He worked in the Fighter Command HQ underground operations room and handled secret Ultra material from Bletchley Park. He assembled information about German long-range weapons, going to France and Belgium in late 1944, to investigate captured sites. He wrote that he was ...the member of the intelligence staff of ADGB responsible for keeping the Chief Intelligence Officer, Vorley Harris and the Air Officer Commanding Sir Roderic Hill, informed about the threat from the rocket." From 1944 to 1945 he was at SHAEF headquarters in Versailles. At the end of the war in Europe he was appointed Air Historical Officer, Fighter Command. After leaving the RAF in 1948, he went to the Cabinet Office as a historian and wrote the official history volume The Defence of the United Kingdom; giving his address in the preface as Falmer, Sussex. Since 1957 he had been a free-lance writer on military topics. More