Description
World War /Two/Aviation/ RAF/Military/interest
AVIATION/PLANES/AIRCRAFT/MILITARY AIRCRAFT /WORLD WAR ONE & TWO/INTEREST
THE FIGHTER PILOTS
by
EDWARD SIMMS
PUBLISHED ; CASSELL
FIRST EDITION 1967
The Second World War saw the zenith of the fighter pilot. He was the last of the individualists: whatever warfare retained of the traditional chivalry and glamour of single combat devolved upon him. Some of the pilots them- selves, like Richard Hillary, saw a mystical, near-religious quality in their lives and deaths, and never more so than in the Battle of Britain, which has been given the trappings of an Arthurian legend, a medieval crusade. Many of them became national heroes, while as a body they exercised an influence upon the course of the war quite out of proportion to their numbers. Yet, little attempt has been made to assess their contribution accurately in terms of statistics or of proven achievement. The figures quoted at the time, based largely on the evidence of the pilots concerned, have never been officially confirmed or corrected; and the whole picture of the fighter pilots’ war has remained vague and contradictory. For the purposes of this comparative study, the author has analysed the performances of the fighter arms of the Royal Air Force, the Luftwaffe and the United States Army Air Force in Western Europe, in North Africa and in Eastern Europe. He has examined in detail the true odds as between, for example, the R.A.F. and the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain. He explains how and why the German pilots so enormously outscored their Allied opponents, and what the effective value of a legendary figure like Hans-Joachim Marseille was to his country’s war effort. To bring these points home to the reader, and to show how different conditions were on the Western Front, where Johnny Johnson led the Allied scorers with 38 victories, and the Eastern‘ where Hartmann claimed his fantastic 352, Mr Sims has analysed in depth sorties flown by these two pilots, Marseille, Douglas Bader, and others. Edward Sims, him self a former fighter pilot, has devoted years of research to the preparation of this book. From squadron records, interviews with the principal participants and authorities and many other sources, he has con- structed a most important — and controversial — record of this most celebrated, most glamourized and least understood aspect of the war. Edward Sims and his wife and son live in West Germany, where he reports on news and developments in Western Europe for syndication in the United States. He served as a fighter pilot in the Second World War, flying thirty- three missions over Germany. Since the war he has been a journalist and editor of various American news- agencies and newspapers. He is the author of American Aces and Greatest Fighter Missions.
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BINDING TIGHT .CLEAN INTERIOR
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