AIR WAR NORMANDY

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Description

For the air forces, D-Day was the culmination of many months of preliminary operations; this illustrated account profiles the actions of RAF Bomber and Coastal Commands and USAAF bombers.

So much ink has been spilt and so many miles of film expended on the amphibious invasion of Normandy on 6 June, 1944, otherwise known as D-Day, and so familiar have become the images of men leaping from their landing craft and wading ashore as shells explode all around them, that it is all to easy to forget that none of this would have been possible without the virtually complete air superiority which the Allies had gained over the Luftwaffe in advance of the invasion.
In this absorbing book Richard Bickers, who himself served in Fighter and Coastal Commands, and in the Desert Air Force, and knows from personal experience what he is writing about, describes how that superiority was won, and held after the landings. He describes in some detail how the vital necessity for air/land cooperation was brought home to the senior officers in North Africa and emphasizes how valuable this lesson was to prove later in the war. He tells of several of the French and Belgian units who had managed to escape from Nazi-held Europe to fight on and were now returning home. He recounts the experiences of German pilots who by then were seeing things in a very different light.
He also describes the war of the men on the ground, the crews who serviced the planes and the Airfield Construction Squadrons who built and ran the runways as the Allies advanced into Occupied France. Richard Bickers has produced a worthy tribute to a supremely gallant band of men who played a vital part in restoring liberty and democracy to the Continent of Europe.