A Nazi Germany fighter pilot gives readers a bird's-eye view from the cockpit of aerial combat against the Allied forces in World War II.Within weeks of war being declared, Wolfgang Fischer had volunteered to join the Luftwaffe and spent nearly five of the succeeding six years of hostilities in uniform. During this time he was given a succession of postings varying from a long-range recce unit; as a decoder in a met office in occupied France; to a bomber squadron; a...

A World War II memoir by the renowned German fighter pilot—from his Hitler Youth glider training to combat missions against the Soviet Air Force.Herr Norbert Hanning's wartime career makes for fascinating and highly informative reading on an aspect of the 1939-45 air war not often covered in the English language; primarily that of the campaign against the Soviet Union.He was one of the midwar-generation Luftwaffe fighter pilots and began operations with JG 54...

"Well-written and holds the reader's attention . . . an engaging book and a rare personal view of flying one of the most iconic aircraft of WWII." — FiretrenchAfter recounting his early days as a naval cadet, including a voyage to the Far East aboard the cruiser Köln and as the navigator/observer of the floatplane carried by the pocket battleship Admiral Scheer during the Spanish Civil War, Helmut Mahlke describes his flying training as a Stuka pilot....

The Ju 87 Stuka was the most feared weapon in the German arsenal in the first year of World War 2, the Luftwaffe using it to deadly effect during the Blitzkrieg between September 1939 and June 1940. Although vulnerable to the enemy fighters due to its moderate speed in level flight and general lack of manoeuvrability, the Ju 87 nevertheless soon came to symbolise the might of Nazi Germany as the mere handful of Stukageschwader supporting the Wehrmacht rampaging out of the Fatherland took a...

At the time of publication, no single volume in English had ever appeared in the West dealing with this intriguing subject area. Once restrictions relaxed in the former Soviet Union, the records of their elite pilots' deeds - detailed in this book - came to light.Although initially equipped with very poor aircraft, and robbed of effective leadership thanks as much to Stalin's purges in the late 1930s as to the efforts of the Luftwaffe, Soviet fighter pilots soon tu...

The Hurricane saw widespread action with Allied forces, as the RAF's first monoplane fighter. This book describes its many feats throughout 1945.It served as a fighter-bomber on the Channel Front, where the American Eagles and Polish units were amongst the Fighter Command squadrons flying the Hurricane, and where some of its highest-scoring aces operated. The Sea Hurricane was the principal fighter deployed by the Fleet Air Arm in the Mediterranean, and Hurricane u...

Entering service at the end of the Battle of Britain, the pugnacious Bristol Beaufighter was deployed in numbers by Fighter Command just in time for the start of the Luftwaffe's night 'Blitz' on Britain.Flown by specialised nightfighter squadrons – several of them elite pre-war Auxiliary Air Force units – it was the first nightfighter to be equipped with an airborne radar as standard. Thus equipped, it combined the ability to 'see' the enemy at night with the devas...

An illustrated history of JG 3, which flew every major variant of the two legendary German wartime fighters, the Messerschmitt Bf 109 and the Focke-Wulf Fw 190.Jagdgeschwader 3 may not have the same immediate resonance as some of the more famous Luftwaffe fighter units, such Jagdgeschwader 2 'Richthofen', but it is arguably the archetypal German fighter formation of World War 2. Not only did it participate in every campaign fought by the Luftwaffe (with the excepti...

This volume tells the story of the daylight air battles over Germany through the eyes of the Bf 109 aces involved. It traces the development of the aerial defence of the Reich from its small beginnings to arguably the most savage and costliest campaign in the history of aerial warfare.The Luftwaffe pilots explain their tactics and relate their experiences – in the early days, waiting for short-ranged Allied fighters to turn back before attacking the bombers, the se...

One of the most important, and yet least publicised, components of the front-line Luftwaffe was the Schlacht, or ground attack, arm. This book details the Schlacht units who were in the thick of the fighting from the first day of the war until the last.They played a vital part in the heady successes of the early Blitzkrieg campaigns and went on to perform an equally essential role in the dark hours of last ditch defence and ultimate defeat. In between, they fought ...

Initially flying Italian-supplied Fiat G.50s, the Croat forces suffered heavy losses during 1942 whilst flying alongside JG 52 in the southern sector of the Russian front.Despite this, a significant number of kills fell to future aces such as Cvitan Galic and Mato Dubovak during this time, and when the units re-equipped with Bf 109G-10s in 1943, battle-seasoned Croat pilots started to rack up impressive scores.This book reveals how, by 1944, Croat air group...

The Defence of the Reich campaign completes Osprey's coverage of the German aces that flew the Fw 190 during World War 2.Renowned aviation author and artist, John Weal, presents the last volume of Fw 190 Aces not previously covered in the Aircraft of the Aces series. From mid-1942 until the end of the war, German fighter pilots were deployed in the defence of the homeland in an effort to halt the near-constant bombing raids by Britain and America. This book tells t...