ISBN 1-871187-34-6
224 pages

Introduction; Notes; Sources; Acknowledgements; Photos; Summary; Indexes.

   Martin Middlebrook digested reams of Bomber Command records and produced his excellent Bomber Command War Diaries. John Foreman has taken a similar approach with Fighter Command. (More precisely, Fighter Command, Second Tactical Air Force, 100 Group, and Air Defence of Great Britain.) He's done a fantastic job of assimilating mountains of data from untidy primary sources and presenting on neat, concise, useful pages the first complete account of British fighter operations in the opening months of the war. That's great. Even better, this is only the first volume in what promises to be the definitive record of Fighter Command's daily activities.
   Much as Middlebrook presented enormous amounts of data in tabular format, so too Foreman offers daily records with rows and columns of carefully tabulated and cross-checked statistics: enemy aircraft destroyed; probably destroyed; enemy aircraft damaged; RAF machines missing; aircraft lost and/or written off ("Cat E"); and pilots killed in action, missing in action, and wounded in action. These numbers are broken down by squadron within each day. Here's a sample:

   The whole lot is then summarized at the end of each month along with other pertinent notes.
   In addition to the daily statistics, Foreman offers commentary for that date (depending on events, these range from a brief "nil" to a few paragraphs) describing the course of the campaigns as a whole and air operations in particular.

   The German forces were now advancing through Holland while in Belgium the spearheads were threatening Maastricht, where two vital bridges spanned the River Meuse. The Belgian Army had failed to destroy these, and thus it fell to the RAF to attempt the task. Airfield attacks continued across France, Belgium and Holland. Fighters operating from England flew offensive patrols over the North Sea and the Dutch and Belgian coasts.

   Most chapters begin with a synopsis of a particular phase of the air war and the entire book is sprinkled judiciously with photos of pilots and aircraft. In addition to this invaluable but somewhat flat material, Foreman leavens the whole with numerous sidebars. These boxes contain a variety of supporting and enriching stories, explanations, biographical sketches, aircraft specifications, orders of battle, and the like ranging from a single paragraph to several pages.

Head-On

   At this time Squadron Leader J. M. Thompson's 111 Squadron pilot's were trying out a new tactic; the head-on chrage. On 10th July 1940 Thompson led his nine fighters in line abreast formation in a head-on attack on the KG2 Dorniers, all pilots blazing away and knocking down two of the bombers in the first pass. One was an 'accident' however, for the wing of Flying Officer T. P. Higgs' Hurricane slammed into one bomber. Both aircraft spun into the sea and Higgs was killed. Flying Officer H. M. Ferris claimed a third Dornier damaged before disposing of a Bf109 and returned, badly shot up by other German escorts. The head-on attack was later to be copied by other units, notably 92 Squadron, and was almost invariably to prove as devastating as 111 Squadron's debut had been.

   This first volume covers the action from 3 September 1939 through 6 September 1940. Chapters include Beginnings; The Phoney War; The Waiting Game; Blitzkrieg in the West; The Battle of the Channel; and The Battle of the Airfields as well as a Summary chapter. Volume two, we're told by the author, is well underway ("My own records already cover every combat involving a claim or a casualty and covers Fighter Command, 2nd TAF, 100 Group intruders, ADGB, US 8th, 9th and 1 TAF (Prov), on a massive day-by-day database, so all I had to do was to compress it down!") and will carry straight into the "non-stop offensive in 1941".
   Well done and highly recommended. Bring on volume two.
   Available from mail order booksellers, local bookshops, or directly from Air Research Publications.
   Thanks to Air Research for providing this review copy.