Battle of Britain, West Sussex (Hardback)
One County’s Role in the Spitfire Summer of 1940
Imprint: Air World
Pages: 312
Illustrations: 32 black and white illustrations
ISBN: 9781526792655
Published: 15th March 2026
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By July 1940, Britain stood alone in Europe. Hitler’s troops had reached the French coast after storming their way across northern Europe and, following the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk in June, it was assumed that the next battle of the Second World War would be fought on the beaches of southern England. The fear of German forces launching an invasion that summer was very real, and all that stood between Britain and Hitler was the English Channel.
Almost every generation of Sussex men and women had learnt to live with the threat of attack from across the water. This time, though, the threat came not just from the sea but also from the sky and for the first time in history a battle would be fought, and won, almost exclusively in the air – for their invasion to succeed, the Germans needed to achieve air supremacy over both the Channel and the beaches of the south-east.
Throughout July 1940 the Luftwaffe’s attacks intensified, with the 10th now being considered the first day of the Battle of Britain. When Goring’s aircraft launched their assault on the United Kingdom, many parts of the country found themselves quite literally on the front line – and no more so than the county of West Sussex.
Drawing extensively on records held in local and national archives, Eddy Greenfield provides a detailed and comprehensive day-by-day account of activity in and over West Sussex throughout the campaign from 10 July to 31 October 1940. It is not only a story of how the RAF and other defenders battled the Luftwaffe’s relentless onslaught, but also how the residents in the county’s towns and villages played their own part in the national war effort.
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I have just finished reading Eddy Greenfield’s ‘West Sussex – One County’s Role in the Spitfire Summer of 1940’.
Martin Barratt
This is an exceptional book, extensively researched, well-written and brimming with details. I have no doubt that it will become an essential volume to add to the library not only for historians but also for the causal reader interested in both the Battle of Britain and the extensive engagements that took place over West Sussex 86 years ago. The author’s approach, breaking the narrative down into a day-by-day account from 10th July (recognised as the start of the BoB) until 31 October, really pulls the reader in and conveys the growing sense of the scale of operations as the events unfold. Interesting too is the detail provided on the involvement of the Blenheim Squadrons as it is usually images of Spitfires and Hurricanes that spring most readily to mind when thinking about the wider conflict, but other aircraft also played their part.
As someone interested in local history the real pull of the book is the almost forensic level of detail provided on where specific engagements occurred, where aircraft actually came down, bombs landed and the human stories on the ground (whether combatants or non-combatants). Many of the locations remain to this day and using the book it’s possible to pinpoint/plot exactly where these events happened. There is a famous picture of a Stuka in a vertical dive in the process of being shot down after attacking Tangmere on 18th August, the crash site is a few hundred yards from my home and it was interesting reading the background on how both it and other aircraft met their individual fates on what was to prove to be the hardest day for West Sussex in the entire campaign.
Highly recommended – Five Stars.
Martin Barratt
About Eddy Greenfield
EDDY GREENFIELD is a freelance writer and author of A-Z of Horsham and Secret Arundel. With a particular interest for military and aviation history, as well as the local history of Sussex, Surrey and Wiltshire, Eddy has spent more than a decade investigating the wartime heritage of West Sussex. He has previously written more than sixty magazine and newspaper articles, and specialises in sourcing primary documentation in order to get to the heart of the matter, and prides himself in discovering long-forgotten and unusual stories from the past. Eddy has also been involved in local history projects run by local museums and West Sussex Library Service. He has also worked as a freelance academic editor and proofreader, with clients including doctoral students and NGOs. Eddy lives and works out of his home in the Sussex Weald, his home county, and is a keen genealogist. He has traced his Sussex and Surrey routes back fourteen generations.
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