The detailed history of the Heinkel aircraft manufacturers from their early years, through the war years and beyond. Specifications, performance, dimensions, weights, armament, engines and other relevant details. Details on around seven hundred aircraft, plus just over three hundred and fifty pictures and ninety five plan diagrams.
Propaganda Postcards of the Luftwaffe focuses on the efforts of the powerful Nazi propaganda machine to promote the technical achievements and might of the then newly created German airforce. The Luftwaffe had been announced to the world in March 1935, despite the restrictions contained in the Versailles Treaty signed after the First World War denying Germany the right to develop military aircraft. All major aircraft types used by the Luftwaffe together with many lesser known, obscure and secondary types are represented in this book. There is a section covering the main figures of the Luftwaffe and the leading aces who flew the aircraft. The German Air and Propaganda ministries worked together and, using professional photographers produced quality images, which were then made available to the general public in an attempt to inspire the nation and create strong moral.
Actions of the German air force during the Spanish Civil War. Covers the bombing of Guernica and other events. Draws from previously undiscovered source material.
One of the most significant innovations in modern warfare has been the appearance and development of air power, a technology which demanded technical and financial investment on a whole new scale and which ultimately changed the fundamental nature of war itself. This book covers the history and development of the German air force from 1935 to 1945, with descriptions and illustrations of almost all of the Luftwaffe's airplanes, including fighters, jet fighters, dive-bombers, ground attackers, medium and heavy bombers, jet bombers, seaplanes, flying boats and carrier planes, transport and gliders, reconnaissance and training aircrafts, helicopters, and many futuristic projects and other rarities.
The Battle of the Atlantic was the longest campaign of World War II, lasting the entirety of the war in Europe from September 1939 to May 1945. It was also one of the war’s most complex campaigns, involving strategy, operations, tactics, logistics, politics, diplomacy, and alliances. During the war’s first two years, the United States was drawn deeper into partnership with Great Britain, and closer toward conflict with Germany, in the waters of the North Atlantic. Franklin Roosevelt realized this theater’s importance: “I believe the outcome of this struggle is going to be decided in the Atlantic.” And so American, British, and Canadian forces battled Germans at sea and in the air to protect the flow of first materiel and then men from the United States to the United Kingdom. The sea part has been well covered: how German U-boats and other warships hunted Allied convoys and how the Allies ultimately turned the tide. Not so much the air war. In Six Air Forces over the Atlantic, Joseph Molyson tells the story of the Battle of the Atlantic from the perspective of the air forces—and airmen—who waged it from the skies above the icy waters of the North Atlantic. He blends big-picture attention to strategy and tactics with dramatic episodes of air-to-air and air-to-sea combat, including the engagement in which a British light bomber captured a German U-boat near Iceland. He details the close eye Franklin Roosevelt kept on the campaign, the effect B-24 Liberator bombers had, and the rise of the Royal Air Force Coastal Command as a true U-boat-busting force. The result was victory in the Atlantic, as well as a significant contribution to victory in World War II.
Operation Barbarossa: Volume IIA concerns the Wehrmacht. All the significant German weapon systems and combat squads used in the campaign are analysed using the quantitative methodology detailed in Volume I, along with the contextual history. An assessment of each weapon system's inherent 'combat power' is provided, as well as attributes such as the relative anti-tank, anti-personnel and anti-aircraft values. Volume IIA then focuses on the detailed Kriegstarkenachweisungen (KStN, or TOE) for German land units (including those in the West), as well as the unit's actual organisation and equipment. All significant units in the German Army (Heer), Waffen SS, Luftwaffe and security forces are included; ranging from the largest panzer divisions, down to small anti-aircraft companies, military-police units, Landesschutzen battalions, and rail-road and construction companies. In all cases the data is presented in detailed tables, using the weapon systems and combat squads previously analysed.
The warships of the World War II era German Navy are among the most popular subject in naval history with an almost uncountable number of books devoted to them. However, for a concise but authoritative summary of the design history and careers of the major surface ships it is difficult to beat a series of six volumes written by Gerhard Koop and illustrated by Klaus-Peter Schmolke. Each contains an account of the development of a particular class, a detailed description of the ships, with full technical details, and an outline of their service, heavily illustrated with plans, battle maps and a substantial collection of photographs. These have been out of print for ten years or more and are now much sought after by enthusiasts and collectors, so this new modestly priced reprint of the series will be widely welcomed.??This volume is devoted to the six ships from Emden to NÙrnberg that were built between the wars. They were primarily intended for commerce-raiding, but the war gave them few opportunities for such employment, although they did provide useful support for key naval operations in the Baltic and North Sea. Two were lost in the 1940 Norway campaign, but the remainder survived for most of the conflict.
John Killen's exhaustive work is a study of German air power between 1915 and 1945, from the early days of flying when Immelmann, Boelke, Richtofen and other First World War aces fought and died to give Germany air supremacy, to the nightmare existence of the Luftwaffe as the Third Reich plunged headlong to destruction. Here are the aircraft: the frail biplanes and triplanes of the Kaiser's war; the great Lufthansa aircraft and airships of the turbulent Thirties; the monoplanes designed to help Hitler in his conquest of Europe. Here are the generals who forged the air weapon of the Luftwaffe - the swaggering Goering, the playboy Udet, the ebullient Kesselring and the scapegoat Jeschonnek; here, too, are the pilots who tried to keep faith with their Fatherland despite overwhelming odds; Adolf Galland, Werner Molders, Joachim Marseille and Hanna Reitsch. Not least are the actions fought by the Luftwaffe from the Spanish Civil War to the Battle of Britain, through the bloody struggle for Crete and the siege of Stalingrad to the fearful twilight over Berlin.
Volume IIB is the second volume relating to (and completing) the Wehrmacht, and the German mobilisation and war-economy, from June to December 1941. It includes the most detailed Orders of Battle ever published on the German Heer, Luftwaffe, Waffen SS and Kriegsmarine, in all areas of the Reich, between 22nd June and 4th July 1941. Even small and obscure units are included, such as: flak companies, artillery HQs, observation battalions, bridging columns, Landesschutzen battalions, MP battalions, railroad companies, and Luftwaffe Kurierstaffeln, Verbindungsstaffeln and Sanitatsflugbereitschaften. The Luftwaffe OOBs also include details on aircraft types and strengths in each air unit.
Founded in Warnemünde in 1925, Arado Flugzeugwerke developed civilian and military prototypes for the clandestine armament programme of the Reichswehr. From 1933 when licensed production of military aircraft commenced, the factory also built a number of their own designs. Best known are the training planes Ar 66 and Ar 96, the catapult floatplane Ar 196, and the record-breaking sport aircraft Ar 79. With the two- or four-engine Ar 234, the world’s first operational jet bomber was built. At the end of the war, Arado initiated the project of the first supersonic experimental aircraft. Arado Flugzeugwerke: Aircraft and Development charts the development of all Arado aircraft between 1925 and 1945, as well as the development and capabilities of the factory. It also gives an overview of the licensed-productions and other projects. The information in this book is based on original documentation, unpublished photographs and will rectify some of the speculation and fantasy that has been published about Arado Flugzeugwerke.
