We have an exclusive interview with Jim Crossley, author of the newly released Churchill’s Admiral in Two World Wars. Enjoy!
Tag: WW2 Page 1 of 4
Fascinated by the Battle of Britain from an early age, as a young man I realised that recording and sharing the Few’s memories was of paramount importance. At the time, back in the mid-1980s, membership of the Battle of Britain Fighter Association was well populated and the then Honorary Secretary, the now late Wing Commander Pat Hancock, supported my research by forwarding letters to individual pilots of interest. These included a wide-range of personalities, from famous airmen like Group Captain Peter Townsend and Air Marshal Sir Denis Crowley-Milling to the ‘also rans’, as Battle of Britain Hurricane pilot Peter Fox famously described himself and peers. Indeed, it was Peter’s ‘also rans’ that were of greatest interest to me, having recognised that whilst many famous and distinguished pilots had either published personal memoirs or had biographies written about them, lesser-lights had no platform to record and share their experiences. This I became dedicated to resolving.
The United States was propelled into World War II by the surprise Japanese attack on the Naval base at Pearl Harbor in the Hawaii Islands on 7th December 1941. The very last United States operational biplane combat fighter plane of any military service had been the Grumman F3F-3, of which the Dash-3 version had been assigned to the aircraft carrier Yorktown (CV-3), but from which the last one had been retired from front-line service in November 1941.1 Thus, in terms of aerial battles, the American Air Forces of the Navy, Army and Marine Corps did not strictly qualify for inclusion in my book Combat Biplanes of World War II.
However, one military biplane did see considerable service throughout that conflict, albeit as a scouting, anti-submarine and target spotting aircraft, mainly in the Pacific Theatre of War.
Hitler’s Housewives-German Women on the Home Front is an intimate and provocative view into the lives of women in Third Reich Nazi Germany in the Second World War.
It is interesting to note that during Adolf Hitler’s 1932 election campaign over half those citizens who voted for Hitler were female. The reasons for this are quite distinct. It was Germany’s women who probably suffered most during the great instability of the post 1918 years. As the worldwide depression hit Germany husbands lost their jobs rival political groups brawled on the streets, the mortality rate among the young soared and it was nothing out of the normal for a family of six to lose four of its children to malnutrition and disease.
On the blog today we have an exclusive interview with Jean-Denis Lepage, in which he tells us about his new release Torpedo Bombers, 1900-1950.
A Brief Guide to:
The Second World War Through Soldier’s Eyes: British Army Life 1939-1945
In 2016 Pen and Sword published my book: The Second World War Through Soldier’s Eyes. They will kindly be re-publishing it in paperback during May 2020, which will coincide with the 75th anniversary of VE Day.
In the following video Pen and Sword author Geoff Simpson tells us all about his new book A History of the Battle of Britain Fighter Association. Enjoy!
Driven by his passion to research and share the stories of casualties, and record the human experience of war, Dilip Sarkar MBE is a best-selling author whose work is highly regarded globally. In this Q&A Dilip, tells us more about his upcoming books!
Seventy-five years ago, the formal announcement of the end of the Second World War in Europe on 8 May 1945 was one of the major milestones of the twentieth century and it is entirely appropriate that it should be widely marked. The Allies’ victory over Hitler’s fanatical fascism that had wreaked such havoc in Europe and beyond had never been inevitable. In summer 1940 when Britain and the Empire stood effectively alone, with the all-conquering German forces just across the narrow Channel, our Nation’s future was grim.
MALTA
George Cross Island
‘Sleeping or waking Malta is always in my thoughts’, so said Admiral Lord Nelson during the Napoleonic Wars. With the rise of the Nazis in 1930’s Germany, and the increasing prospect that Europe would again plummet into war, Malta was once more destined to become vital to Allied interests.
