To see in the dark and to hit their target was the challenge Bomber Command faced in the Second World War. To see in the dark and stay hidden only complicated matters more. In Will Iredale latest book, The Pathfinders, he paints a vivid of the force set up to guide Bomber Command’s squadrons to their targets in Occupied Europe. The Pathfinders is a superior narrative history that pays the respect that is due and to the price that was paid.
Read MoreThe Strategic Bombing campaign of the Second World War is still one of the most controversial subjects of that conflict 80 years on. The destruction wrought upon hundreds of cities from Coventry to Tokyo brought the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, The Bomber Mafia, looks at the titular group of USAAF thinkers who believed that they had the tools at their disposal to bring high-altitude precision bombing to a realisation.
Read MoreOne of the defining moments of my young life happened on a raining autumn day in 1988 on a family holiday to London. We visited Barnardo's, where my father had spent a brief period with his sister after they had been taken from their mother. We sat in a dull office and a rather officious woman explained to my father that his father was a German POW named Herman. A brief moment of shock and pain for my Dad, who was finally learning a truth about his life he had never known.
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