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by Dilip Sarkar.
Hardback (6.4×9.5 inches). 281 pages. 2024.
Subtitle: 7 September 1940 – 17 September 1940
If you want a day-by-day, mission-by-mission, and virtually every combat-by-combat account of the Battle of Britain, here’s your book and presumably series. This is the fifth volume of the series, which is being published in association with the Battle of Britain Memorial Trust. I have not read the first four. The series is planned to have eight volumes.
This combs official British records, diaries, and memoirs and uses such first-person accounts to detail the aerial combats during these 11 days in the fall of 1940. If you are looking for this sort of excerpt-intense narrative, you’ll be as happy as an ace landing after a successful mission.
However, as I’ve noted before, after about a half a book, excerpt after excerpt starts to read the same. Don’t get me wrong. It’s meticulous research from a guy who seems to specialize in Battle of Britain history. He weaves observations about the strategies and tactics within to describe trying to control the chaos of combat operations. There is even the occasional German first-person account and a passing effort at trying to verify claims with actual losses. But this is an excerpt-heavy account.
One of the more interesting excerpts came from Hurricane pilot Sgt Alfred Marshal, who damaged a ME-110, but was in turn shot down by the rear gunner (p42). I don’t recall ever reading about a ME-110 rear gunner shooting down a fighter.
And that said, some of the most interesting excerpts to me were from the firefighters on the ground as the bombs rained down and fires roared during the Blitz.
The book contains 56 black and white photos and two black and white maps.
I read up to the photo section, or about half the book. You can certainly pull more than a few scenarios from its pages. How interesting you find the book depends on how interested you are in reading lots of excerpts. Ties go to the author.
Enjoyed it.
— Reviewed by Russ Lockwood
