Air War Classics

Battle Over the Reich

The Strategic Bomber Offensive Over Germany

Volume One - 1939-1943

by Dr. Alfred Price

Reviewed By John Ratzenberger, #40196

Illustrated:  250 photos (some in color), 20 color profiles, some maps and tables.

ISBN:  1-903223-47-4

MSRP:  $49.95

Available from Specialty Press, www.specialtypress.com, 1-800-895-4585, ($4.95 S/H fee).

Bottom Line Up Front: 

This is a very well written and illustrated summary history of the strategic air war over Germany from the perspective of the 3 main protagonists -- Germany, Britain, and the United States.  I highly recommend it as the starting point for a collection on the air war in Europe, or to supplement/complete an existing collection.  It is less useful if your interest is just color schemes and markings.  I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and am awaiting publication of Volume Two.

Review:

Dr Price has been writing about aviation for several decades, and is one of my favorites.  This is an update of his 1973 book of the same name, a single volume of 208 8"x10" pages, containing 180 B/W photos.  I don't have the original to make a comparison, but the update would appear to be significant if Volume One is an indication -- it should work out to about 320 pages & 500 photos for the 2-volume set.

Please note the title and sub-title -- the book discusses the Strategic Offensive over Germany.  It does not cover the tactical air war, the Battle of Britain, the Desert Air War, the raids on the Rumanian oil fields, the war against U-Boats, etc.  Dr. Price does an excellent job sticking to the subject and not straying into other topics.  This is one of the things that makes this book work so well -- and makes the text so informative.

The book starts with a brief introduction on the forces in 1939 and the few relevant actions that year.  As one would expect from the dates covered, much of this volume concerns itself with RAF Bomber Command's efforts to establish a strategic bombing program and the German counter-efforts.  Dr Price provides a very clear and logical discussion of this, covering RAF efforts to use radar and electronics to guide the bomber force and counter the German defenders; and covering the German efforts to track the attackers, guide fighters and anti-aircraft guns, and to thwart the British guidance systems.

Although the book touches on high level decisions, and has folded in some nice individual action vignettes, the bulk of it falls into a broad middle range, touching on technological development, changes in doctrine and emphases, and discussions on the trade-offs and rationale on both sides as the air war evolved.  It covers aircraft capabilities, flak weapons, ground and airborne radar, and other topics, all in a very logical and complimentary fashion so that one is not skipping around and changing thoughts all the time.

In the latter part of this volume, the US forces begin their contribution and Dr. Price covers this well, skipping over the early minimal efforts to get to the point where American air power and round-the-clock bombing became a significant factor and problem for the Luftwaffe.  This volume ends in October 1943, after the second major attack on Schweinfurt and neatly closes with a summary chapter that leads into Volume Two, which will allow us "to observe how events progressed in this, the largest and hardest fought air campaign in history."

There is very little on the downside about the text in this book.  I think a brief 3-4 page chapter covering what the 3 countries brought from World War I into the between war period that influenced the forces structure, equipment, and doctrine in place in 1939 would have been beneficial -- as it is, one starts somewhat cold in the first chapter.

Editorially, I found no spelling or grammatical errors in either the text or the captions -- a major plus in my view because it denotes professional concern for quality by the author and the publisher. 

The biggest omission is of footnotes and a bibliography -- given the style of the book, I can do without the former, but never the latter.  The book almost begs you to chase off into more detail and a bibliography would have greatly assisted that, as well as reinforced the scholarship.  I hope Volume Two has the bibliography for the set.

The pictures are excellent -- an eclectic and well-chosen mix of aircraft, interiors, and weapons; anti-aircraft weapons, radar, and sites; leaders, pilots, and aircrew; targets before and after, operational scenes, and so on.   A few of them are in color.  I've seen some of these pictures before, but not so many that I felt I was getting another re-hash from the popular press.  There are (20 I think) color profiles of aircraft with caption-commentary on their color scheme.

The color profiles are interesting, but add little to the book.  The captions for the color profiles and their related pictures seem to have been prepared separately and not correlated.  In at least one case there was a conflict (the base for the Whitleys of 102 Sqdn).  Mostly I think a single caption would have worked better.

Very little hard aircraft data is given, either in tables or text.  Captions for the pictures contain max and cruise speed at a single altitude, take-off weight, number and type of guns.  There is no range data, no crew data, no ammo capacity, no bomb load data -- and take-off weight is certainly an odd statistic to choose out of all those available.

The book provides, at 6-9 month intervals, a table showing Luftwaffe fighter strength by unit and aircraft. There is no equivalent series of tables for the Allied bomber and escort forces and I think the comparison would have been useful.

There are a couple of very general maps, but I think the "usual" maps showing the general locations of German cities, industry, and air defenses along with the Allied bases and escort ranges would have enhanced the book.

Summary:

This is a great book and I will get Volume Two -- despite any comments above, it is a great read and very informative.  I recommend it to anyone with an interest in the air war over Europe during World War II.  Any shortfalls mentioned above can be easily filled in by a few other references, and I think this book works very well as a starting point from which you can build, or reinforce, your knowledge of the subject matter in an organized fashion.

I would like to thank Specialty Press and IPMS for providing the review sample.

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