new Luftwaffe books from Casemate Publishing

..translated by this blogger..

Special offer on Casemate Illustrated series  - link below - and more many offers in the Casemate Summer 2020 catalogue on Casemate, Kagero, Helion, Stackpole and RZM titles (..including £20 off the Unternhemen Ilse title ..)

Christer Bergstrom's book ' The Battle of Britain -an epic conflict revisited' (Casemate) - book launch for the 75th anniversary Battle of Britain 15 September flypast

..after watching the 75th anniversary Battle of Britain flypast on the cliffs at Capel (between Folkestone and Dover and site of the Battle of Britain Memorial) we moved on to Hawkinge for the launch of Christer Bergstrom's new book, ' The Battle of Britain -an epic conflict revisited' (Casemate) at the Kent Battle of Britain museum. The book certainly looks impressive and the paper quality is reasonably good - the artworks are very nice and there is a good selection of interesting pics. The text is very readable (not cluttered with details such as WNr. etc..) and the presentation is in a diary format. There are over 500 'notes' at the rear of the book.
A couple of points that struck me while dipping in and out of the contents;
- the contribution that Bomber Command made to the RAF's success in the Battle of Britain - RAF bombers operated throughout the summer over Germany and the occupied countries, kept the pressure on psychologically, directly contributing to the 'indecision' in the Luftwaffe leadership ...(London vs. the airfields).
 - the 're-appraisal' of combat losses on both sides - the RAF's being much higher for the four months July to October
 - the re-evaluation of the performance of the Bf 110 units, which enjoyed better 'kill' ratios than the 109 units; " the Bf 109's alleged superiority over the Bf 110 finds no support in these statistics.."

More on the book from publishers Casemate here

I was impressed with Christer - a very engaging and genial character- and his new book looks to be excellent. Here Morten (Jessen) and I are clutching our copies while I struggle to hold onto Lady (my Pomeranian) who has just spotted 'Scramble' the museum cat - nearly had a 'dogfight' on our hands!

Elsewhere on the Air War Publications blog Morten reports on his trip around some of southern England's Battle of Britain sites, including a day at Audembert and other Battle of Britain sites in northern France.

Casemate Publishing - autumn/Fall catalogue 2011, Mrazek Airborne Combat Stackpole

A reminder that the latest Casemate catalogue can be downloaded as a pdf file from the Casemate web site. Casemate are distributors for a range of publishers producing exciting works that will be of interest to readers of this blog; Heimdal, Kagero, Stackpole, Histoire et Collections, Bernard and Graefe to cite just a few. See Casemate's publisher list here.

Latest from Stackpole is James Mrazek's "Airborne combat " (below) a history of fighting gliders in WWII. Mrazek has previously written about the German 'prise de main' of the key Belgian fort at Eben Emael during May 1940 and in this inexpensive 500-page softback, Mrazek presents details of all WWII combat gliders through accounts of all the significant operations of the war including Crete, Sicily, Normandy, Arnhem and 'Varsity',  the crossing of the Rhine. Eben Emael proved that the glider could be used with devasting tactical surprise. Once again though this was a field in which the Germans were some considerable way ahead of the Americans. By 1942 German glider effort had reached a pinnacle of technical achievement that even the US with its huge technical resources could not attain. The US neither produced a glider anywhere as large as the Me 321 Gigant nor attained the excellence in innovation and design reached by the Germans. Mrazek's accounts of elite glider troops in action are nicely illustrated with rare images and first-hand accounts and include chapters on Soviet and Japanese gliders.

new from Kagero - Topcolors 20 'In Defence of the Reich' & Topcolors 21 'Messerschmitt 109 in North Africa'

'Topcolors' continues with No. 20 'In Defence of the Reich', featuring 8 colour profiles of the Luftwaffe’s most formidable fighters; the Messerschmitt Bf 109, which first saw operational service during the Spanish Civil War and was still in service at the end of World War II, during which time it was the backbone of the Luftwaffe's fighter force; and the Focke Wulf 190, which quickly proved to be superior in all but turn radius to the Royal Air Force's main front line fighter, the Spitfire Mk. V when introduced into service during 1941. Units covered here include the special Moskito-Jagd Staffel 10./JG 300, the Sturmgruppe of JG 300 as well as machines from JG 1 and JG 11. As far as I am aware Staffelkapitän 10./JG 300 Karl Mitterdorfer's 'White 1' with its fantastic cowl 'comet' emblem has only previously been available on a couple of very expensive Lifelike and EagleCals decal sheets. The 'raison d'être' of this series is the stunning A-4 size decal sheet printed by Cartograf for all 8 painting schemes in 3 scales - simply unbeatable value. And with Kagero of course you get a nice A-4 landscape booklet with your decal sheet. The booklet is packed with colour artwork profiles, featuring both sides of the aircraft and a top view. Quite simply superb! Available from http://www.casematepublishing.co.uk/

 
 Also just published is Topcolors 21 featuring the Bf 109 in North Africa. Subjects include rarely seen JG 77 options covered photographically in Jochen Prien's German language history of this Geschwader - so unlikely to have been seen by many. And a little scoop here - if you are planning on getting Erik Mombeek's new Luftwaffe Gallery (issue 2) due imminently, then Topcolors 21 will complement it perfectly for the modellers reading this.

The latest in the 'Monograph' series features the early A-D variants of the Bf 109. Another superbly done title, this volume discusses its origins and early development with detailed coverage of changes made in all its variants and sub-variants, including the special modifications for the foreign recipients. The initial production models of the A, B, C and D series were fitted with the relatively low-powered, 670–700 PS Junkers Jumo 210 series engines. A handful of prototypes of these early aircraft were converted to use the more powerful DB 600. No 'freebies' are included here although I should just point out that a nice selection of decals for ZG 2 Doras can be found in Kagero's 'Bf 109 over Poland' in the 'Air Battles' series. Otherwise there is plenty of well-written text covered the type's operational history in Spain and Poland including many first-person accounts newly translated from rare and obscure German -language titles. A must-have for Luftwaffe enthusiasts!



NEW from Casemate "The Last Drop" - Operation Varsity March 24-25 1945

"...In March 1945 Allied forces prepared for the final drive into Germany to end World War II. Standing in their way were the Rhine River and, on the opposite bank, desperate German defenders ready to fight to the last man. Operation Varsity--the last major airborne assault of World War II and the largest airborne assault of all time--began on the morning of March 24 when a fleet of Allied transport planes took off from air bases in France and England. In addition to towing more than 1,300 gliders, the planes carried some 17,000 paratroopers from two Allied divisions--the Red Devils of the British 6th Airborne Division and the Thunder from Heaven of the U.S. 17th Airborne Division. While the 6th had parachuted into battle on D-Day, the 17th had never jumped in combat before. Their mission was to drop behind enemy lines near Wesel, Germany, and gain a foothold for the Allied ground troops who would soon pour across the Rhine. The Germans had reinforced the area with antiaircraft artillery and greeted the invading armada with a firestorm of flak. Some Allied planes went down before troops could jump; others burned as paratroopers leapt from them. Upon hitting the ground, the soldiers regrouped, defeated sharp German resistance, and secured their objectives in the fields, forests, and villages around Wesel. Drawing on war diaries, unit histories, after-action reports, and interviews with veterans, The Last Drop captures Operation Varsity as it was experienced by soldiers in the sky and on the ground, from the horrors of parachuting from a C-46 or flying a glider through bursting artillery fire to the mental and physical punishment of infantry combat..."

From the view point of the Luftwaffe's hard-pressed fighters, Varsity was perhaps the final nail in the coffin for those piston-engined fighter units still offering resistance on the western Front. Even the leading Reich defence Geschwader JG 300 was committed against the Allied airborne forces landing east of the Rhine!  The forces put up by III. and IV./JG 300, weakened by losses in combat and accidents, amounted to only some fifteen aircraft per Gruppe while II./JG 300 put 32 fighters in the air. This was to be their last major action of the war. Fw. Ulrich Hampel (7. Staffel) was flying as wingman to Ofw. Rudi Zwesken;

 "...We were jumped by Mustangs with a big height advantage who proceeded to cut to ribbons the last three or four Schwärme of our formation in almost total radio silence! My attention was drawn to a muffled cry, barely audible in my earphones. I thought I heard the word “Mum”, but it was perhaps “Mustang”. I immediately shot a glance behind and saw, staggered back to the horizon, seven or eight palls of black smoke, which marked the sites where my comrades had plunged into the ground. I saw one them going down and impact in a ball of fire. The fact that I was flying in Rudi Zwesken’s Schwarm most probably saved my life. Just as we became aware of the drama being played out behind us, one or two very audible shouts of “Mustang!” shattered the radio silence. The two leading Schwärme broke hard and turned into the enemy fighters. I yoked my ship into a steep turn to starboard while switching on my gunsight and dropping my ventral tank. In such situations of “clear and present danger”, breaking hard to starboard was axiomatic, a sort of practiced routine. The enemy fighters almost certainly failed to follow me because of the surprise effect of this maneuver. Given the low altitude, the combat was brief. As my Schwarm had been split asunder, it was “every man for himself ..."

The mission was a disaster for JG 300 as the Focke Wulfs and Messerschmitts were cut to pieces by P-51s of the 353rd FG. The few remaining fighter aces of the Sturmgruppe II./JG300 were killed including Fw. Ewald Preiß of 6./JG300 and Rudi Noske of 8./JG300.

Of the 32 Focke-Wulf 190s airborne from Löbnitz, barely ten made it back to the airfield. 5. Staffel had lost six pilots.  6. Staffel had been literally wiped out during the encounter. If Lt. “Gustl” Sallfner’s 7. Staffel had returned largely unscathed, claiming two Mustangs shot down, the same could not be said of 8. Staffel. Two of its veteran pilots, Hptm. Kurt Loos and Fw. Rudi Noske, perished near Göttingen. The last Sturmgruppe defending the Reich had suffered irreplaceable losses.

Uffz. Hans Bastek (5./JG 300), shot down and killed over Göttingen on 24 March 1945 by Mustangs of the 353rd FG

Sharks of the Air - the story of Willi Messerschmitt - new from Casemate Publishing

New from Casemate Publishing

".....In July 1944 the Allies were stunned by the appearance of the Messerschmitt Me-262, the world’s first operational jet warplane. This new German fighter was more than 100 mph faster than any other aircraft in the skies. Although always greatly outnumbered, the Me-262 gained scores of victories over Allied fighters and bombers, and by the end of the war, many of the Luftwaffe’s greatest aces had clamored to be in their cockpits. No wonder military leaders believed that if it had been introduced earlier, this jet could have changed the outcome of the war.


Sharks of the Air tells the story of Willi Messerschmitt’s life, and shows how this aeronautical genius built many revolutionary airplanes—not excluding the Luftwaffe’s mainstay, the Me-109—and culminating in the Me-262. It describes how his various warplanes fought in Spain, Poland, France, Britain, the U.S.S.R., and over Germany, and it provides thrilling accounts of air battles drawn from combat reports and interviews with veterans.
This book also shows how Messerschmitt—like other geniuses such as Porsche, von Braun, and Speer— was affected by cutthroat Nazi politics, and describes his intense rivalries with other aircraft designers. It reveals aspects of his life never before made public, including his love affair with the beautiful Baroness Lilly Michel-Rolino, a rich aristocrat who left her husband to live with Willi.

And finally it shows how in Word War II Messerschmitt believed he was loyally supporting the Fatherland, until he realized too late that Hitler was a madman. Like many of the technical innovations of Nazi Germany in the war, production arrived too late in order to change the final outcome. If Messerschmitt had been given free rein from the start, however, Allied air superiority might never have occurred.

Author James Neal Harvey has been a pilot for more than 40 years and has owned a dozen aircraft (including a De Havilland Tiger Moth built for the RAF, a Stinson V-77 that flew in the Royal Navy, and a Messerschmitt Bf-108 that served in the Luftwaffe). Author of six previous books, his grasp of aero-dynamics informs the narrative, as he examines how Messerschmitt might well have changed the course of the Second World War.

Reviews

…perfect blend of sympathetic career biography and gripping military history…Only an author with 40 years' flying experience and a connoisseur's appreciation of World War II vintage aircraft could have written such a fine book, solidly researched from family interviews, pilot reports, and appropriate secondary sources. Additionally, the dramatic writing style makes Harvey's effort a definite winner for all World War II military history buffs....