Pictorial History of the R.A.F. 2 [antikvár]

IntroductionThe author of one popular history of the Battle of Britain has expressed the opinion that the battle was lost by the Luftwaffe rather than won by the Royal Air Force. Those of us privileged to have lived through the Summer months of 1940, in England, can feel only contempt for such triviality. Here was one of the decisive battles in history, which ended with the Luftwaffe driven from the daylight skies over Britain by the numerically-inferior squadrons of R.A.F. Fighter Command. From that moment, however grim the struggle, defeat was unthinkable for the British people.Five more years were to pass before the enemy was crushed. In those years, the Royal Air Force flew and fought everywhere from the snows of Northern Russia to the deserts of North Africa, from the solitude of mid-Atlantic to the too-full skies over the Ruhr. No single volume could contain details of each important action or even every aspect of an air war as widespread and complex as this. What we have tried to do in this small book is to trace briefly the main course of the war in the air in each theatre, to tell how it was fought, with what and by whom, and to explain why campaigns worked out as they did.The reader may look in vain for particular deeds of individual heroism or for a reference to the service record of an obscure type of aircraft flown briefly by one or two squadrons. It is our hope that he will not look in vain for the reason why historians of the future will regard this period as the British Empire's finest hour, and that he will learn in truth the greatness of the part that the Royal Air Force played in making final victory possible.January, 1969J.W.R.T. and P.J.R.M.