Overview

This compact, masterful work by an outstanding historian marks a pivotal moment in military history: the birth of Britain’s Royal Air Force. Writing with great clarity, Richard Overy shows how the RAF emerged from the deadly stalemate of trench warfare during World War I. With German bombers attacking British cities by 1917, Prime Minister David Lloyd George and his minister of munitions, Winston Churchill, navigated the organizational breakthrough that made the RAF an independent force in spring 1918. The RAF would prove highly influential in the development of air power around the world.

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Reviews

A vivid narrative. -- Matthew Reisz - Times Higher Education Concise but fascinating.... Overy is excellent on many of the details of the early RAF. -- Leo McKinstry - Literary Review Important. -- Paul Kennedy - Wall Street Journal Air power [became] the key factor in 20th-century warfare. Overy's book gives a brilliantly lucid account of how that process began. -- Noel Malcolm - Sunday Telegraph

Author Information

Richard Overy is the author of many outstanding histories of World War II, including Rain of Ruin: Tokyo, Hiroshima, and the Surrender of Japan. His study of Hitler and Stalin, The Dictators, won the Wolfson History Prize. He lives in England and Italy.

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