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Stephen Bungay’s magisterial history is acclaimed as the account of the Battle of Britain.

Unrivalled for its synthesis of all previous historical accounts, for the quality of its strategic analysis and its truly compulsive narrative, this is a book ultimately distinguished by its conclusions – that it was the British in the Battle who displayed all the virtues of efficiency, organisation and even ruthlessness we habitually attribute to the Germans, and they who fell short in their amateurism, ill-preparedness, poor engineering and even in their old-fashioned notions of gallantry.

An engrossing read for the military scholar and the general reader alike, this is a classic of military history that looks beyond the mythology, to explore all the tragedy and comedy; the brutality and compassion of war.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0071B705O
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Aurum; Reissue edition (September 25, 2010)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 25, 2010
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 15405 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 513 pages
Reviewer: o. migillicuddy
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: The best account of the Battle of Britain
Review: This is the most complete, wisest book on the Battle of Britain that I have read in a 45 year fascination with the battle. I thought it good enough to buy a spare copy lest I somehow lose the first.First, my only problem with the book. I hate it when I cannot find a place mentioned in the text on a map in the book. One may blame that on the editor. Overall, the maps are adequate, but could be more numerous and improved.To the main points. Stephen Bungay is a excellent writer and he knows the subject from start to finish. He paints a good background to the battle, from the commanders and the equipment to the situation. It was very much a conflict of commanders, and he analyzes the personalities and their contributions to the battle. He gives credit to some of the nearly forgotten heroes such as Squadron Leader Ralph Sorley.Chapters 8 and 9 should be required reading for anyone directing any complex operation:"Plans always get disordered, in part because that is what the other side is there for, and to some extent they will always succeed...Winning plans are very simple and...battles are lost rather than won. The winners make fewer mistakes than the losers. Given every army's inherent disposition toward (cock-ups) preventing (them) requires enormous skill, energy and determination. Good plans minimize cock-up potential, which comes in various forms...ignorance...uncertainty...complexity...equipment...opposition...not making mistakes is not easy, but it is easier than coming up with a brilliant masterstroke."Chapters 30 is a summation of what was required for victory, and the 10 indispensable men who contributed to that victory. The greatest? He makes a good case for a nearly forgotten man, and I will mention him because he deserves to be known: Keith Park.Chapter 31 gives the meaning of the Battle of Britain, what was achieved by those who fought it. It was the most important battle of the War, according to Field Marshall von Rundstedt. Again, read it.These chapters alone are worth the price of the book. It is the best account of the battle, what it took to win it, how it was won, and what it led to.

Reviewer: Tom Munro
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Good modern history
Review: For years the story of the Battle of Britain was a tale of British heroism and German hubris. The account used to go that Germany came close to winning when they attacked the British airfields. However a decision by Hitler to attack London allowed fighter command to rally and win.This book puts that myth to bed an explains why the Germans never had a chance of winning. The British had developed a radar system along their coast. This allowed them to initially locate German attacks which could then be monitored by ground observation stations. The British were thus in a position to alert their airfields to attacks and they could also control the rate at which fighters were sent into battle. In the battle of France and the attack on Poland the Germans had been able to destroy most of the enemy aircraft on the ground. This had been because they had been able to achieve surprise and the way that French and Polish aircraft were parked on the ground allowed for them to be destroyed easily. The British by comparison had any aircraft on the ground separated from other aircraft. Each aircraft was also kept in a u-shaped bomb shelter which meant that only a direct hit would destroy it.Germany started the battle with a bigger air force but not that much bigger. More importantly the British were out producing the Germans in the manufacture of all aircraft types. The battle was one of attrition not only of aircraft but also of pilots. The British had the advantage that as the conflict took place in their airspace they were able to recover a large percentage of their pilots and put them back into combat. The downed German flyers either died or became prisoners.The author of the book does some number crunching and calculated that for the Germans to have won the battle of Britain they would have had to shoot down five British aircraft for every one they lost. That is to destroy the British Air Force by September of 1940. The actual loss rate was a narrow advantage favoring the British. As they manufactured more aircraft this meant that they were stronger than the Germans when the battle ended.The big advantage the Germans had at the start of the battle was that they had superior fighter tactics. In the First World War fighter planes flew in a reasonably tight formation which was meant to provide protection for the others in the group. In the late 30s air combat changed so that the key to success was not the maneuverability of aircraft that had been so important in WW1. Rather what was important was speed and first opportunity. Most fighter pilots in WW2 never shot down another aircraft. Most junior pilots who were shot down would never even see their attacker. What was critical was the first sight on the enemy. On seeing the enemy a fighter would attack at speed having a short time to shoot and then to dive away. The Germans developed very loose formations called swarms. One aircraft would be designated as the hunter and the other aircrafts role was to search for enemies and to provide protection to the hunter. The German system resulted in huge number of kills for the designated hunter but not for the others. This book is interesting as it suggests that a tiny minority of fighter pilots around 5% were responsible for most of the kills in all airforces.The British had three main types of fighters in the battle. The Spitfire was their best fighter although the Hurricane was reasonable. The one turkey was the defiant, an aircraft which easy meat for the Germans and had to be withdrawn from combat. The main German fighter the ME 109 was comparable to the Spitfire and somewhat better than the Hurricane. However it only had a short range. The Germans also had a longer range fighter the ME 110 which like the Defiant ended up being easy meat for the opposition and ended the war in a night fighting role.The Germans tried two strategies. The first was to send fighters over in sweeps. The second was to send over heavily escorted bombers. The British avoided combat with the fighters doing sweeps. It committed its aircraft to attacking bombers which were protected by fighter escorts. What happened in this case is that the Germans would lose a lot of the advantages that they normally had as they had to travel slowly to cover the bombers. Most fights then turned into slogs in which the British would lose slightly more fighters than they destroyed but would make up for it in shooting down German bombers.Both sides at the time had little real idea of what was happening. The reported kills of each side were exaggerated by a rate of 5-7 times over what was happening. The British who overestimated the size of the German forces thought that they were winning a heroic victory rather than coming out marginally in front. The Germans thought that they had succeeded in destroying the British and were surprised when each attack met large numbers of aircraft which should not have been there.The best account of the battle so far in which a statistical break down has given a more real idea of what was happening as opposed to the old chronological accounts.

Reviewer: Ruggero B.
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: In a world of post truth , of no values except that of the strongest, of no content in what is said or written except for the purpose of influencing others, of appearance rather than being, this book shows that a different world can exist and real people lived and died for it. Not only as youngsters but living their beliefs into middle and old age with deep humanity. The book is heart wrenching because war is shown without veils and there is nothing beautiful in it, not for those who died or were injured for life, not for their mothers and fathers and not for their squadron colleagues, who didn't talk about those who left because they had to live on to do their duty.The author is able to look into the facts of both contenders, the good things and the bad things, no matter whether they are English or germans , and that is one of the greatnesses of this book. One can't turn his head away from the horrors described dismissing them as biased and that is why the book is deeply sobering and naturally leads to bitter reflections.As an aeronautical engineer I could not find anything less than properly documented technically and often made me learn some things. But so the author masters a lot of other subjects as an insider: warfare, history politics.If I really have to say something which is less than a praise it is on the amount of space given to statistics. And that comes from a statistic enthusiast: now I understand why my sister eyelids droop after I have enthusiastically exposed teams of them: I know why they are important, but it's no use if I lose my listener along the way

Reviewer: G. Smith
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Really readable . Analytical, looks at both british and Germans sides of the battle - also great bibliography for ideas of future reading for scholars.

Reviewer: FictionLover
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: I thought I’d read most of what had been said about the BoB and approached Stephen Bungay’s book (via a Kindle sample) prepared for repetition and rehashing. How wrong I was. Bungay’s diligent and long book is a model of what historical research should be. Structured in 3 parts: Build Up (10 chapters), The Battle (16) and Aftermath (4), the narrative is near perfect, showing the thinking, misunderstandings, insights and the illusions on both sides, making heroes as much of the planners (Dowding), the greatest tactical air defence commander ever on our side (Park, a New Zealander) as well as lesser-known men – like Ralph Sorley who researched, devised and bullied into production the unheard of power of eight-gun fighter armament—plus seven other men in Bungay’s Top 10 who made Britain’s fighter defence what it was: near perfect. These men were as vital as the pilots themselves.And he does not stint on the Germans either. Kesselring, Osterkamp and others become as real as the British side and full of energy, cleverness and, as becomes obvious, illusions and the certainties that can only come from over-optimistic intelligence reports that describe the dying-on-its-feet RAF.Each chapter ends with a lot of reference sources and notes, and I realised quickly that Bungay had that rare gift of being able to distil extremes of research into not-too-long, well-written, well-argued chapters, leaving the mass of detail for me (or you) to browse as needed. The detail was so good that sometimes it felt as if I was there.Bungay’s motivation for his study arose from his doubts over a government booklet, published in 1941 that he found on his father’s bookshelf, and which greatly bigged-up the BoB and lionised its pilots—and made the Spitfire The Only Fighter (tough luck Hurricane – you just weren’t beautiful enough even though you scythed down just as many Germans pro rata as the elegant Spit). This work of propaganda and mythology sold **two million copies** during a bad time in Britain’s war.This booklet created the Great BoB Myth, The Few, the dark enemy at the gates, imminent invasion, plucky little Britain (little!—we had an Empire at our back), shoot-down rates against the Luftwaffe that were sheer fantasy, and so on. And myths are not true accounts, be it the Trojan War or the Battle of Britain.I knew I’d like Bungay when he wrote:“My training, both at university and subsequently in business, has led me to be sceptical about anything until I see the data”My feeling exactly. So, the author went out and found the data. He haunted the Kew Public Records office. He obtained and read in the original German the accounts by the Luftwaffe of what was happening during the summer of 1940, and many other high level command papers that showed what the German attackers thought, what they believed, their brilliance and—always a revelation—their unbelievable ignorance and ineptness. Bungay interviewed some of the decreasing number of pilots who fought in 1940 and survived. There is a little battle magic and battle tragedy in his book, enough to give it a feeling of reality—for example, when we learn how 19 year old Spitfire pilot Bob Doe, 14 confirmed kills, worked out and entirely on his own how to stay alive ‘up there’ by ditching orthodox RAF doctrine and behaving like the Luftwaffe. Remarkable.The German fighters, 109s, all of them, flew in to battle at a staggering 36000 feet, from which lofty perch they dived (make that screamed) out of the western rising sun down on to the defenders. It came as no surprise to learn that 4 out of 5 RAF pilots shot down never saw their attackers.And finally, the poor old maligned Hurricane, so pathetic that one 109 pilot wrote home to Mutti and Vati that it was ‘a tired old puffer’—until he and his leader got killed by a pair of Tired Old Puffers flown by Poles.The streetwise ‘wild men’ of Polish 303 Squadron out of Northolt—who were late arrivals to the Battle on August 31st and who flew Hurricanes, shot down more Germans than any other BoB squadron. Aggressive pilots like 303 posted a claim to loss ratio of 14:1—that is 14 shot down or damaged for every 1 Pole. Of course, the Poles weren’t novices. They were streetwise, battle-experienced pilots, and men who largely ignored the RAF’s antiquated training in fighting tactics.The Hurricane was no push-over and my heart swelled with pride.Here I must declare an interest. My engineer father worked 12 hour days building Hurricanes in Kingston on Thames and then the secret Langley factory from 1937 until he transferred to Tempests in ’43.Finally, in the 4 chapters called Aftermath, the strangest most powerful finding on the long-term effect of the BoB on the Germans:“In 1945, after the defeat of Germany, the Russians asked the Wehrmacht’s most senior operational commander, Field-Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, which battle of the war he regarded as most decisive. They were expecting him to say ‘Stalingrad’. What he said was: ‘The Battle of Britain’. They put away their notebooks and left.For breadth, depth and sheer readability, I give A Most Dangerous Enemy an unequivocal 5 stars.Read it.

Reviewer: StevSmar
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: THE BEST book I have read on the Battle of Britain in a long time!!!! Narration is gripping and he doesn't get bogged down in the details like some BofB books I have read.

Reviewer: beneteusebi
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Molt entretingut i agradable de llegir. Realment val la pena per el recull de informacio sobre la ll guerra mundial.