Fighter; The True Story of the Battle of Britain
Jean Paul Tremblay (Maps) New York: Ballantine Books, 1979. First Ballantine Books Edition. Presumed first printing. Mass market paperback. xxi, [3], 311, [1] pages. Cover worn and soiled. Some page wear and rippling. Includes Acknowledgments, Introduction by A. J. P. Taylor, Selected Bibilography, and Index. Part One covers Strategy; Part Two covers Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, Commander in Chief Fighter Command; Part Three covers Weapons: The Metal Monoplane and Radar; Part Four covers Tactics; and Part Five covers The Results. The author was the Bestselling Author of The Ipcress File and Funeral in Berlin; Illustrated with over 100 striking photographs, maps, and drawings. Leonard Cyril Deighton (born 18 February 1929) is a British author. His publications have included history and military history, but he is best known for his spy novels. Deighton became a book and magazine illustrator—including designing the cover for first UK edition of Jack Kerouac's 1957 work On the Road. During an extended holiday in France he wrote his first novel, The IPCRESS File, which was published in 1962, and was a critical and commercial success, and he wrote several spy novels featuring the same central character, a working class intelligence officer, cynical and tough. Several of Deighton's works have been adapted for film and other media. Films include The Ipcress File (1965), Funeral in Berlin (1966), Billion Dollar Brain (1967) and Spy Story (1976). In 1988 Granada Television produced the miniseries Game, Set and Match based on his trilogy of the same name, and in 1995 BBC Radio 4 broadcast a "real time" dramatization of his novel Bomber. Derived from a Kirkus review: Len Deighton has written a military delight: a meticulous history of the men and machines of the Luftwaffe and the Royal Air Force in their struggle over Britain in the summer of 1940. Deighton describes the Battle in the stark, no-nonsense terms of a chess player recounting a game; the reader will not feel what it was like to be a Spitfire or Messerschmitt pilot, but he will know all the cold, hard constraints of aero-technology and strategy under which those airmen operated. In layman's terms, Deighton examines the effective range, armaments, and carrying capacities of the planes, the primitive radar systems employed by both sides, and the advantages and disadvantages of different deployments of aircraft. An extensive air war was unprecedented in 1940, and Deighton renders well the suspense of the deadly trials and errors of both air forces as they groped with logistical problems never before encountered. As in all wars, actual combat was but a small part of the war effort; Deighton thus emphasizes the mundane but vital matters of aircraft production and pilot training in Britain and Germany. Although he gives fullest play to these strategic concerns, Deighton does place them in a political context. The British Air Ministry, full of theorists who had never flown a plane, constantly hampered Air Marshal Hugh Dowding in the conduct of Britain's defense. On the other side, Hitler's preoccupation with Russia and the invincible incompetence of Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goering precluded a Nazi victory. Deighton's history will be welcomed by all those who never weary of the world's "last romantic battle" Condition: Fair.
Keywords: Royal Air Force, RAF. Luftwaffe, Battle of Britain, Aerial Combat. Hugh Dowding, Adolf Galland, Leigh-Mallory, Erhard Milch, Keith Park, Radar, Ernst Udet
ISBN: 0345274253
[Book #81975]
Price: $13.75