Spitfire

In late spring 1940, Nazi Germany’s domination of Europe had looked unstoppable. With the British Isles in easy reach since the fall of France, Adolf Hitler was convinced that Great Britain would be defeated in the skies over her southern coast, confident his Messerschmitts and Heinkels would outclass anything the Royal Air Force threw at them. What Hitler hadn’t planned for was the agility and resilience of a marvel of British engineering that would quickly pass into legend – the Spitfire.

Bestselling author John Nichol’s passionate portrait of this magnificent fighter aircraft, its many innovations and updates, and the people who flew and loved them, carries the reader beyond the dogfights over Kent and Sussex. Spanning the full global reach of the Spitfire’s deployment during WWII, from Malta to North Africa and the Far East, then over the D-Day beaches, it is always accessible, effortlessly entertaining and full of extraordinary spirit.         

Here are edge-of-the-seat stories and heart-stopping first-hand accounts of battling pilots forced to bail out over occupied territory; of sacrifice and wartime love; of aristocratic female flyers, and of the mechanics who braved the Nazi onslaught to keep the aircraft in battle-ready condition. Nichol takes the reader on a hair-raising, nail-biting and moving wartime history of the iconic Spitfire populated by a cast of redoubtable, heroic characters that make you want to stand up and cheer.

---

Some books that may interest you

One-hour Skirmish Wargames By: John Lambshead	Neville Chamberlain's Legacy By: Nicholas Milton	British Widows of the First World War By: Andrea Hetherington
The Counter-Insurgency Manual By: Leroy Thompson	The Naval Flank of the Western Front By: Mark Karau	War, Resistance And Intelligence By: Dr K G Robertson
Conjuror on the Kwai By: Peter Fyans	ShipCraft 18: Titanic and her Sisters Olympic and Britannic By: Peter Davies-Garner	The Battle of Loos By: Philip Warner