|
|
The Spitfire is the most legendary British of the Second World War but in 1939 and early 1940 it was an unproven new design, about to get it's combat debut.
We start with a first person account of Al Deere’s first combat, over France during the retreat to Dunkirk, the start of a combat career that saw him become New Zealand's second highest ranking ace of the war.
We then move onto the development of the Spitfire, starting with it's immediate precursor, the Supermarine Type 224, before looking at the Spitfire itself. This section covers the famous elliptical wings as well as the problems turning the prototype into a production aircraft. It is well known that it took longer to build a Spitfire I than a Hurricane, but I was unaware it took twice as long to build as the contemporary Bf 109.
We get a slightly different take on the Spitfire's entry into service seen from the point of view of an existing pilot moving from the far more straightforward Gloster Gauntlet onto the complex modern Spitfire. We get a good section on how pilot training changes just before the outbreak of war and in the initial months , to ensure a constant flow of trained fighter pilots.
The introduction to combat section includes the poor tactics used by Fighter Command early in the war, with the tight Vic of three aircraft being far less flexible than the looser two or four aircraft formations used by the Germans. Worse were the Fighting Area Attacks, prescribed ways of attacking bomber formations that assumed there would be no fight escort. Squadrons were also officially banned from developing their own tactics!
The Combat chapter starts slowly, as the Spitfire squadrons remained in the UK and thus only encountered relatively small numbers of German bombers. Things began to hot up during the battle of France and reached an early peak during the fighting around Dunkirk. This period is where we get the first clashes between the Spitfire and the Bf 109. This is where we see the RAF start to change tactics, and also where the Luftwaffe first came up against an equally well equipped enemy with safe bases that couldn't be over run.
This is an excellent study of an early period in the combat history of the Spitfire, looking at how it was created and started to prove itself
Chapters
1 – In Battle
2 – Setting the Scene
3 – Path to Combat
4 – Weapon of War
5 – Art of War
6 - Combat
Author: Tony Holmes
Edition: Paperback
Pages:
Publisher: Osprey
Year: