Marrin's Bookshop

Synopsis

Allied bomber forces against a german city in 1943.

Item Description

FIRST EDITION. 8vo. 8.75 x 5.75 inches. 424 pp. Bound in original red cloth, gilt, in unclipped pictorial dust wrapper. A very good clean copy. Loosely enclosed: signed letter from author on headed notepaper dated 2 November 1982. Illustrated by 24 pages of black an white photographs and by 14 maps in text. Decorated by publisher's device. First edition of the graphic account of the July 1943 firestorm raids which devastated large areas of the German port city of Hamburg. For the first time the RAF used the Window system of dropping aluminium foil strips to swamp the German radar defences. Appendices give the order of battle for the bombers and Luftwaffe fighters. The Acknowledgements provide extensive lists of participants from both sides who were in contact with the author. Martin Middlebrook (1932-2024) was a Lincolnshire farmer who, after a visit to the Western Front battlefields, became an acclaimed military historian of the twentieth century, publishing sixteen titles, 1971-2003.