Impact!

Ref: 5253

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{detailed description}The unearthly howl and scream of an aircraft diving at high speed. The pinpoint accuracy of its cargo of bombs delivered unerringly on the smallest target. These are the elements of the most spectacular of all forms of aerial attack, dive bombing. From obscure experiments at the end of World War One to the savage blitz and the slaughterhouses of the Eastern Front, Crete and the Pacific, the full story of the dive bombers has yet to be told. Now the author has interviewed the dive bomber pilots themselves, the men who dared and survived in combat at vertical velocity through the thickest of flak to smash tanks, troop concentrations, bridges, aircraft carriers and fortresses during World War II and the pilots themselves describe what dive bombing means. Not only do the flyers themselves give graphic portraits of combat missions but from untapped files, documents and reports the author has brought to light new and sometimes startlingly unexpected facets of other aspects of this hidden story. The great conflict behind the scenes in Whitehall with the RAF stoutly resisting attempts to use dive bombers, secret reports on testing the Soviet 'Wonder' dive bomber in Russia, the hushed up success of the Vengeance in the Burma Campaign, the attacks on the giant battleship Yamato and many other strange highlights. What was it like to dive with the doomed Stuka units at Neuhammer, to take part in the first dive bomber missions over Poland, to sink the Königsberg, to dive bomb in a Spitfire? Who 'invented' dive bombing? The true facts are now revealed. What was it like to be on the receiving end of a dive bomber attack, either aboard a destroyer in the Channel or manning an Ack-Ack gun at Tobruk ? This stirring and important book provides a new aspect of the war in the air.
{Author / Publisher / Date}by Peter C. Smith
published by William Kimber 1981 1st edn. 253pp illustrated, index 14x22
{condition}one page (207/8) detached, otherwise very good in slightly torn d/j
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