This book examines and analyses the relationship between the RAF, the Free French Movement and the French fighter pilots in WWII. A highly significant subject, this has been ignored by academics on both sides of the Channel. This ground-breaking study will fill a significant gap in the historiography of the War. Bennett's painstaking research has unearthed primary source material in both Britain and France including Squadron records, diaries, oral histories and memoirs. In the post-war period the idea of French pilots serving with the RAF seemed anachronistic to both sides. For the French nation the desire to draw a veil over the war years helped to obscure many aspects of the past, and for the British the idea of French pilots did not accord with the myths of "the Few" to whom so much was owed. Those French pilots who served had to make daring escapes. Classed as deserters they risked court martial and execution if caught. They would play a vital role on D-Day and the battle for control of the skies which followed.

Arthur Tedder became one of the most eminent figures of the Second World War: first as head of Anglo-American air forces in the Middle East, the Mediterranean and North Africa; then as Deputy Supreme Commander to General Eisenhower for the Allied campaign that began in Normandy and ended in Berlin. During those anxious, exhilarating years, he was, as The Times of London wrote, 'the most unstuffy of great commanders, who could be found sitting cross-legged, jacketless, pipe smoldering, answering questions on a desert airstrip.' After the war, promoted to five-star rank and elevated to the peerage as Lord Tedder, he was made Chief of the Air Staff, holding this appointment for longer than anyone since his time: four critical years (from 1946 to 1949) that saw the tragic start of the Cold War and the inspiring achievement of the Berlin Airlift. In 1950, he became Britain's NATO representative in Washington: a year that saw the start of a hot war in Korea that threatened to spread around the globe. This book provides the first comprehensive account of a great commander's public career and uses hundreds of family letters to portray a private life, both joyful and tragic.

The "forgotten offensive" of the title is RAF Coastal Command's offensive against German sea-trade between 1940 and 1945. The fortunes of the campaign are followed throughout the war, and its success is then evaluated in terms of the shipping sunk, and the impact on the German economy.

Neglected Skies uses a reconsideration of the clash between the British Eastern Fleet and the Imperial Japanese Navy’s First Air Fleet in the Indian Ocean in April 1942 to draw a larger conclusion about declining British military power in the era. In this book, Angus Britts explores the end of British naval supremacy from an operational perspective. By primarily analyzing the evolution of British naval aviation during the interwar period, as well as the challenges that the peacetime Royal Navy was forced to confront, a picture emerges of a battle fleet that entered the war in September 1939 unready for combat. By examining the development of Japan’s first-strike carrier battle group, the Kido Butai, Britts charts both the rise of Japan as a wartime power as well as the demise of the Royal Navy. Japan, by concentrating their six largest aircraft-carriers into a single strike force with state-of-the-art aircraft, had taken a quantum leap forward in warfighting at sea. Simultaneously, British forces found themselves outmatched in this Eastern theatre and Britts makes the case, by looking at a set of key battles, that this is where the global supremacy of Britain’s naval power ended.

Tobruk was one of the greatest Allied victories – and one of the worst Allied defeats – of the Second World War. The 1942 fiasco rocked the very foundation of Winston Churchill’s premiership. It revived the flagging hopes of the German people and fanned the flames of Arab unrest. Furthering Rommel’s ascendency and souring relations within the British Commonwealth, it marked a turning point in Anglo-American relations in the fight against Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. Utilising a wealth of primary and secondary sources, Tobruk 1942 examines why the fortress fell to Rommel’s Axis forces in just 24 hours when it held out against repeated attacks the previous year. Comparing the 1941 and 1942 battles, this book presents a new perspective on Tobruk – the isolated Libyan fortress, and symbol of Allied freedom, which for a period in the war captured the world’s attention.