...........Airfields in the Second World War series

It has often been said that during the Second World War, Britain tended to resemble a gigantic aircraft carrier. Of no county was this image more true than Suffolk.
The build up of the RAF air offensive after 1940, and the arrival of the huge USAAF Eighth Air Force in 1942, meant that by early 1945 in Suffolk alone, there were some thirteen hundred aircraft flying from thirty-two airfields. This book describes the history of these airfields - RAF or USAAF - and highlights the major wartime operations and the many and varied aircraft that comprised the operational squadrons. Numbered among them are the Blenheim, Wellington, Stirling, Lancaster, Liberator, Flying Fortress, Spitfire, Hurricane, Thunderbolt, Mustang and the Sunderland Flying Boat.
These, and the young airmen who flew them, made an immense contribution to the final defeat of the Third Reich, as Allied bombers and fighters flew increasingly larger raids across the North Sea and into the dangerous, smoke-filled skies of occupied Europe.
Graham Smith's action-packed book will appeal equally to aviation enthusiasts and to readers who recall the era when the villages of Suffolk and the skies above them never ceased to drone with the distant roar of departing and returning aircraft.


***Signed by the Author***


by Graham Smith
Published by Countryside Books 1995 1st edition. 288pp illustrated, index, bibliography. 15x21 softcover, very slightly bumped corners, otherwise mint.

The following titles in this series are also available, all paperback and offered in fine to mint condition:

by G. Smith
288pp 2000 1st edition

by G. Smith
287pp 2000 reprint

by G. Smith
283pp 1999 1st edition

by P. Otter
288pp 1999 reprint

by G. Smith
256pp 2000 reprint

by R. J. Brooks
256pp 2001 1st edition

by L. Pilkington
219pp 1998 revised edition

by R. J. Brooks
192pp 2000 reprint

by R. J. Brooks
256pp 2000 1st edition

by P. Otter
319pp 1999 revised edition

In May 1942, five months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the first aeroplanes and crews of the newly formed Eighth U.S. Army Air Force arrived in Britain. Over the next two years their numbers swelled to a massive and powerful force of bombers and fighters described by one USAAF General as 'the greatest striking force the world has ever known'.
They occupied no less than 67 airfields in East Anglia, Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire, Oxfordshire and Hertfordshire and added a huge offensive capability to RAF Bomber Command. A close working relationship soon formed between the Eighth's Brigadier General Ira C. Eaker and his British opposite number Air Chief Marshall Arthur T. Harris.
The Americans were dedicated to high altitude precision bombing in close formation and in daylight. The RAF, who had been bombing Germany at night since 1940, were joined by the Eighth in July 1943 to provide a round-the-clock bombardment.
This book tells the story of the Mighty Eighth during three years of bitter fighting in the smoked filled skies above Germany and Occupied Europe. It was a harsh, harrowing costly battle with 26,000 American airmen killed, 1,900 seriously injured and 6,300 aircraft destroyed. Their missions included the bombing of U-boat bases, oil refineries, railway marshalling yards, airfields in France, Holland and Belgium and general industrial targets throughout the length and breadth of Germany. On D-Day their task was to destroy Normandy beach defences as the Allied troops stormed ashore.
On 13th May 1945 after a Victory Flypast over its headquarters near High Wycombe the majority of the Eighth began making plans to return home. By February 1946 the exodus was complete. Fifty or so memorials, dotted about England, are all that is left of this mighty war machine which made such an enormous contribution to gaining peace in Europe.
Graham Smith has written a book of heroism and high drama which will appeal equally to aviation enthusiasts and to readers who recall or have heard about the era when the skies above England never ceased to drone with the distant roar of departing and returning aircraft.


by G. Smith 300pp 2001 1st edition.
companion to the above "Airfields in the Second World War"