I heard the same, fancy dress was his forte, man in drag his speciality....and he only had one testicle or was that someone else

Wasn't it Hermann "Meyer" who had a penchant for pink uniforms too?

I do remember reading that he was an excellent pilot in WWI.

"Fighter" by Len Deighton is also good read. Focuses a lot on the technology of radar, the people behind the scenes and so on.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fighter-True-Sto...ie=UTF8&s=books

It's actually similar to the Townsend book mentioned earlier. I have both, and would say IMHO that the Townsend one is the easier read.

Worth a look though.

Books: (quoted from this site: http://www.battleofbritain.net/bobhsoc/books.html)

TITLE: Finest Hour
AUTHOR: Tim Clayton & Phil Craig
ISBN: 0 340 75041 3
PUBLISHER: Hodder & Staughton
The period of the Battle of Britain comes to life in this book with a difference. It is the book of the BBC television series of the same name. It is not a book about tactics, it is not concerned about aircraft and bombs. It is a book about people. Basically it is a big collection of peoples stories, what they done, how they reacted, how they felt and how they went about their duties during this period of the war. Interviews and stories from Denis Wissler and Paul Ritchie of the RAF, Marion Holmes who was Winston Churchill's secretary, Peter Vaux and Ernie Leggett from the army, Ian Nethercott who was in the navy and WAAF Edith Kupp who married Dennis Wissler as well as many others. Excellent reference if you are looking for feelings and personal quotes. The personal testimonies are excellent in this hard cover book of 418 pages with numerous photographs.


I read this book some time ago and loved it. I really wish someone would make a movie about Dennis Wissler and Paul Ritchie. I would have romance, drama and tradgedy, which is all the good earmarks of a movie. Beats the hell out of the fictional story that was embedded into that 'Pearl Harbor' movie.

Is the movie "Hope and Glory" worth putting on the list? I loved this movie. No fighting but you get to see what the Battle of Britain was like for a young kid in london. Lots of funny moments.

I would like to recommend History Today's article

Pie in the Sky?

On Sunday, September 17th, Britain will once again remember the epic struggle of Fighter Command in the Second World War at a service of thanksgiving and rededication in Westminster Abbey before a congregation of airmen past and present. Like the great flypast of three hundred airplanes last September, the event will encourage Britons everywhere to recall how a handful of heroes saved these islands from invasion. But is this true - or the perpetuation of a glorious myth?

It is not mere revisionist history that puts this question, and indeed offers the suggestion that it would be at least equally fitting if, on this Battle of Britain Day, the Royal Navy were to send its ships in procession along our coasts - for it was the navy, not the RAF, that prevented a German invasion in 1940. This is the contention of three senior military historians at the Joint Services Command Staff College. Together they run the High Command course that teaches the past to the air marshals, generals and admirals of the future...

Unfortunately it's not free, but for six pounds you can read it along with four more articles from their archive.

And yet it is revisionist history.


S! Comp

So did you enjoy the article? :-)

No. I'm not paying six quid for it but it sounds very similar to other revisionist histories I've read. Anything new there?

S! Comp

Harvest of Messerschmitts: The Chronicle of a Village at War. 1940.

David Knight. Published by Frederick Warne 1981 but now out of print. ISBN 0723227721

Well illustrated. This little known book captures the atmosphere of the Battle better than most books on the subject.

Salute

Actually, while the Battle of Britain, which was an aerial engagement, was won by the RAF, the existence of the British Navy was at least as important to the fact the Germans could not invade as the presence of the RAF in the skies.

Because the Royal Navy outnumbered and dominated the German navy so thoroughly, in order to have a successful invasion, the Germans needed COMPLETE Air Superiority. The British merely needed a contested air space for their Navy to be able to operate, albeit with considerable loss, against an invasion.

For example, while the Germans had an overall air superiority during the Dunkirk evacuation, the RAF was able to contest control enough so that the Royal Navy could come in and evacuate the BEF. Losses were heavy in ships, but the job was done.

If the Germans had launched their invasion in September 1940, they would not have been able to prevent the Royal Navy from entering the Channel and sinking the majority of the German transports and supporting Naval elements. The losses to the Royal Navy would be high, but considering the alternative was the overrunning of the British homeland, it would be acceptable.

The Royal Navy never participated except in a peripheral way in the Battle of Britain, but when Hitler, the Werhmacht, the Kriegsmarine, and the Luftwaffe, planned their operations, it was the shadow in the corner of the room, the proverbial 1000 lb Gorilla.

Interesting read and well researched:

http://fishponds.org.uk/luftbri1.html

Scroll down, http://www.naval-history.net/WW2RN04-194004.htm

RN destroyer losses: 6 out of 40 (3 from torpedos)

If anyone living in the States subscribes to the online Blockbuster postal thingy, they have both Piece of Cake and the very moving documentary Finest Hour available. Just watched both of these again, the latter causing a couple of eye moisteners.

S! Comp

Greetings,

So long since I've been on here I had to create a new user!

Anyway, I'd certainly add 'The Hardest Day' by Alfred Price to the list. Excellent work on the frantic action of the 18th August 1940.

The low-level attack by KG76 on Kenley was the subject of one of the instant action scenarios in the original BoB.

S!

I thought a more substantial reason why Hitler didn't invade Britain was that he never expected Britain to keep fighting, and never made any serious preparations to invade?

Weather and time of year was also a major factor, not to mention Hermann Goering kept promising Hitler that the Luftwaffe could defeat Britain without the need for German troops on english soil.

Not withstanding the other factors like the Germans being overstretched on virtually every continent...

From a certain point of view, all history is revisionist history.

***

Even if the Germans could have achieved air supremacy, they wouldn't have had an easy go of an invasion. The Royal Navy would almost certainly have been tossed into the mix regardless; not only that, but the Germans had virtually no knowledge of how to conduct an amphibious invasion of a contested coastline (in fact, no nation had proper knowledge at the time). The equipment that was planned to be used consisted mainly of river barges, which would have required an almost unheard-of dead calm in the Channel in order to work without swamping, or so this one has been told. If any beachhead was to be secured, it would have to have been done via a combined naval-borne and airborne assault, using those massive Me 321 and Me 323 transports as well as the venerable old Ju 52, all of which would have had to brave a well-established network of flak and beach obstacles.

In short, the RAF was only the most visible of a large number of obstacles in Germany's way in 1940, the British having had almost a full year to prepare to resist a seaborne invasion. While Britain had nothing to approach the intricate fortifications of the Atlantic Wall, they had well enough preparations to make Jerry's day really unhappy. Of course, we can say this now, but this one imagines that the attitude was somewhat different in those days, and perhaps that could be one reason why the victory of the RAF is celebrated so much more then other factors in the campaign, such as how vital the Observer Corps was in supplementing the radar installations.

Dornier Do-17/215 and some Do-217 super site

Don't forget the Wiki's. They are at least as good as the general books out there.