Jane's All The World's Aircraft 1945 Collectors Edition

Air power exercised a decisive influence over military operations throughout World War II. In 1940 the close integration of their air and land forces enabled the Germans to achieve stunning victories in France and the Low Countries. Four years later, the Allied air forces dominated the skies above Normandy, and Operation Overlord succeeded. The German response was handicapped by sustained air attacks on the European rail network. Tactical airstrikes prevented German mechanised forces from exploiting their full mobility, starving them of supplies and destroying their transport columns.
Naval warfare came to be even more dominated by air power, and aircraft carriers superseded battleships. At the Battle of the Coral Sea, hostile fleets engaged without the surface forces ever seeing the enemy. At Taranto and Pearl Harbor, naval aircraft demonstrated their ability to destroy a fleet in its base. The tragic fate of HMS Prince of Wales and Repulse exposed the limitations of traditional naval power in this revolutionary era.
Before the war, the advocates of strategic bombing claimed that bomber aircraft could win wars on their own. The true impact of strategic bombing campaigns continues to be debated today, but the 1945/6 edition of Jane's All the World's Aircraft opened the discussion with a comprehensive overview of air operations from 1944-5.
This edition of the classic Jane's All the World's Aircraft was the first to escape wartime censorship. Publication was delayed until the last possible moment to incorporate the wealth of new information from Germany and Japan. With over 1000 photographs and recognition drawings, it provides technical data for more than 800 aircraft. Yet it is much more than an encyclopedia: it is a fascinating snapshot of the aviation world in transition. This is the dawn of the jet age, the end of one era and the beginning of the next.


edited by Leonard Bridgman
Published by Harper Collins Reprint 1994 fine, d/j good





Note:
"Long" descriptions, where shown, may have been taken from the book's dust jacket notes, and as such are relevant to the date of publication (e.g. any references to "new edition" "previously unpublished photographs" etc.) and not the present.

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