This highly illustrated title deals with the great blitzkrieg campaign of May/June 1940 as German forces poured through Holland and Belgium to confront the French and British. The campaign was audacious, relying on speed and feinting and maneuvers as much as superior force. In the end those qualities were to prove decisive to German success. Peter Dennis' superb illustrations illuminate a campaign which was in many ways ground-breaking, featuring the first ever airborne assault at a strategic level, and at this point the largest clash of armor in history.

Fall Gelb 1940 (2): Airborne assault on the Low Countries (Campaign, 265)

History

Dildy, Douglas C.

Europe

Osprey_Publishing

Designed following the relative poor performance of America's multi-role fighters during the Vietnam War, the F-15 Eagle was conceived as a dedicated air superiority fighter. But having trained for fifteen years in the Eagle, it wasn't Eastern Bloc-operated MiGs that the F-15 eventually came up against, but pilots of Saddam Hussein's Iraqi air force.
 This book analyzes the combat between the American and Soviet "Cold War fighters" in a balanced and objective fashion, examining how the technical abilities of the aircraft combined with the different levels of training available to opposing pilots and ground crews allowed the F-15s to destroy the Iraqi offensive abilities within weeks of the start of the First Gulf War. Packed with artwork, illustrations, and photographs, this book places the reader in the cockpit during one of the last major dogfighting air wars in modern history.

F-15C Eagle vs MiG-23/25: Iraq 1991 (Duel, 72)

Cooper, Tom

Military

Following Argentina's military operation to take possession of the Falkland Islands/Islas Malvinas, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's government launched a major naval operation to return them to British rule. Defending the Royal Navy task force were two small squadrons totalling 20 Sea Harriers (SHARs). Initial clashes between SHARs and Argentine Mirages and Daggers on 1 May 1982 failed to eliminate the Sea Harrier defenders. FAA fighter-bomber pilots relied on daring and courageous ultra-low level attacks, frequently escaping the Sea Harrier's limited capabilities, against Royal Navy warships and auxiliaries, causing considerable damage during Operation Corporate, the large-scale amphibious operation to repossess the islands. Publishing 35 years after the end of the conflict, this fully illustrated volume offers a balanced and objective examination of the SHAR and the Argentine Mirage and Dagger aircraft, highlighting the attributes of both and the skills and courage of the pilots flying them.

Sea Harrier FRS 1 vs Mirage III/Dagger: South Atlantic 1982 (Duel, 81)

Calcaterra, Pablo

Americas

The Battle of Britain was one of the most iconic campaigns of World War II, where the "Few" of the Royal Air Force took on the might of the German Luftwaffe. At stake was not just air superiority over the British Isles--a German victory would enable Hitler's plan to invade and conquer the last Allied country left fighting.
While most narratives of the battle focus on the brave pilots of Fighter Command, this book tells it from the perspective of the German strategists as they attempted to clear the skies over Britain. Explaining Hermann Göring's plans, the Luftwaffe's capabilities in 1940, the RAF's defenses, and how the fierce aerial battles over south-east England were fought, this fully illustrated fresh study is based on original documents and new analysis by an expert on the campaign.

Battle of Britain 1940: The Luftwaffe’s ‘Eagle Attack’ (Air Campaign, 1)

A rigorous new analysis of America's legendary "Big Week" air campaign which enabled the Allies to gain air superiority before D-Day. In the years before the outbreak of World War II, there was a general consensus among military strategists that strategic bombing had the ability to win wars. However, no-one could foresee the devastation that German radar-directed interceptors would inflict on large bomber formations. With the increasingly urgent need to eliminate these German fighter-aircraft prior to D-Day, a concerted two-phase effort, code-named "Operation Argument," was launched by USSAF. Targeting aircraft factories with hundreds of heavy bombers escorted by the new long-range P-51 Mustang, the operation, now known as the "Big Week" campaign, was designed to destroy aircraft production on the ground and force the Luftwaffe into combat to defend these vital facilities, allowing the new escort fighters to take their toll on the German interceptors. Packed with specially commissioned artwork and maps, this title is a detailed and fascinating analysis of "Big Week"--history's first ever successful offensive counterair (OCA) campaign.

“Big Week” 1944: Operation Argument and the breaking of the Jagdwaffe (Air Campaign, 27)

The Battle of Britain has acquired near-legendary status as one of the most iconic events of the 20th century. This new history, based on an exhaustive study of German records, explores the battle through the eyes of the Luftwaffe. Over the past 77 years, histories of the Battle of Britain have consistently portrayed the feats of "The Few" (as they were immortalized in Churchill's famous speech) as being responsible for the RAF's victory in the epic battle. However, this is only part of the story. The results of an air campaign cannot be measured in terms of territory captured, cities occupied, or armies defeated, routed, or annihilated. Successful air campaigns are those that achieve their intended aims or statedobjectives. Victory in the Battle of Britain was determined by whether the Luftwaffe achieved its objectives. The Luftwaffe, of course, did not, and this detailed and rigorous study explains why. Analyzing the battle in its entirety in the context of what it was--history's first independent offensive counter-air campaign against the world's first integrated air defense system--Douglas C. Dildy and Paul F. Crickmore set out to re-examine this remarkable conflict. Presenting the events of the Battle of Britain in the context of the Luftwaffe's campaign and RAF Fighter Command's battles against it, this title is a new and innovative history of the battle that kept alive the Allies' chances of defeating Nazi Germany.

To Defeat the Few: The Luftwaffe’s campaign to destroy RAF Fighter Command, August–September 1940

Crickmore, Paul F.

Review\n"Informative text coupled with archive images and some first class artwork by illustrator Paul Wright." - Robin Buckland, Military Model Scene\nThe history of Nazi Germany's attempt to build a modern aircraft carrier, and the other aviation ships that Germany and Italy designed or operated.\nThe quest for a modern aircraft carrier was the ultimate symbol of the Axis powers' challenge to Allied naval might, but fully-fledged carriers proved either too difficult, expensive, or politically unpopular for either to make operational. After the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935, Hitler publicly stated his intention to build an aircraft carrier, the Graf Zeppelin, which was launched in 1938. A year later, the ambitious fleet-expansion Z-Plan, was unveiled with two additional aircraft carriers earmarked for production. However, by the beginning of World War II, Graf Zeppelin was not yet completed and work was halted. Further aircraft carrier designs and conversion projects such as the ocean liner Europa and heavy cruiser Seydlitz were considered but, in January 1943, all construction work on surface vessels ceased and naval resources were diverted to the U-boat Campaign.\nThis book explains not only the history of Germany's famous Graf Zeppelin fleet carrier and German carrier conversion projects but also Italy's belated attempt to convert two of her ocean liners into carriers. It considers the role of naval aviation in the two countries' rearmament programs, and describes how ultimately it was only Italian seaplane carriers and German ocean-going, catapult-equipped flying boat carriers that both Axis powers did eventually send into combat.

German and Italian Aircraft Carriers of World War II (New Vanguard, 306)

Noppen, Ryan K.

As the routed North Korean People's Army (NKPA) withdrew into the mountainous reaches of their country and the People's Republic of China (PRC) funneled in its massive infantry formations in preparation for a momentous counter-offensive in the last months of 1950, both lacked adequate air power to challenge US and UN air supremacy over both the battlefields and the logistics channels from China into North Korea. Reluctantly, Josef Stalin agreed to provide the requisite air cover, introducing the superior swept-wing MiG-15 to counter the American's straight-wing F-80 jets and to repel the United States Air Force (USAF) B-29 bomber formations that were interdicting the PRC's flow of troops and supplies into North Korea. This in turn prompted the USAF, against its conventional wisdom of retaining its first-line air-defence fighters to face Soviet air forces across the 'Iron Curtain' in Europe, to deploy its very best - the F-86A Sabre - to counter this threat. Thus began a two-and-a-half-year struggle in the skies over a corner of North Korea known as "MiG Alley."
In this period, the unrelenting campaign for aerial superiority witnessed the introduction of successive models of these two revolutionary jets - the MiG-15bis, the F-86E, and eventually the F-86F - into combat. It also saw the transition of operational leadership on the communist side from the Soviet "volunteers" to the newly formed Chinese PLAAF air divisions, and witnessed the re-introduction of the NKPAF, with its "just trained" MiG-15 units, into the air-combat arena. This meticulously researched study not only provides technical descriptions of the two types and their improved variants, complete with a "fighter pilot's assessment" of these aircraft, but also chronicles the entire scope of their aerial duel in "MiG Alley" by employing the recollections of the surviving combatants - including Russian, Chinese, and North Korean pilots - who participated.

F-86 Sabre vs MiG-15: Korea 1950–53 (Duel, 50)

Thompson, Warren

The German blitzkrieg conquest of France and the Low Countries (via the Ardennes, Arras, and Dunkirk) in May and June of 1940 has never been surpassed in the history of warfare in that no clash between such great and apparently equal forces has been decided so swiftly and conclusively. Not deigning to spend itself against the extensive fortifications of France's Maginot Lines, Hitler's Wehrmacht planned to advance its 136 (of 157) divisions through Belgium and northern France in order to destroy the Allied forces there and gain territory from which to prosecute continued combat operations against France and England. Beginning on 10 May 1940, this title follows the fortunes of Heeresgruppe A as its three Panzer Korps moved stealthily through the dark, hilly, and thickly forested Ardennes in southern Belgium before forcing a passage across the river Meuse and racing through France to the Channel in one of the most daring campaigns in history.

Fall Gelb 1940 (1): Panzer breakthrough in the West (Campaign, 264)

On 9 April 1940, German forces invaded Denmark, and then Norway, in an attempt to secure the vital mineral resources of Scandinavia for their war industry. This assault, Operation Weserübung, represents the first joint air-land-and-sea campaign in the history of warfare, and was the only such campaign planned, launched, and completed by the three services of the Wehrmacht. It also included the use of the rarest of German armoured vehicles, the Naubaufahrzeug NbFz.A/B (PzKw V/VI) experimental 'land battleship'. 
This book describes the events of this tumultuous campaign of World War II (1939-1945) that not only led to Winston Churchill's appointment as British Prime Minister, but also saw the crippling of the German Kriegsmarine as a fighting force, as it was reduced to a fleet of submarines and a handful of heavy warships used as commerce raiders.

Denmark and Norway 1940: Hitler’s boldest operation (Campaign, 183)

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