Wing Leader.

Product Information

Although the Stirling didn’t reach its full potential as a bomber, it did perform remarkably well as a glider tug and paratroop transport and was readily available to take part in all airborne assaults on the Continent from D-Day onwards. It also played an important role in sustaining resistance groups. These modified converted bombers were known as the Stirling Mk IV and over 600 of them were built. The Mk V filled another urgent requirement for transport aircraft at the end of the war and in this guise it did modestly well. When Spitfire Mk V pilots first met the FW190s of JG26 in August 1941, it immediately became apparent their old Spitfires were completely outclassed by the Luftwaffe’s new fighter. Losses rose rapidly as more Spitfires fell to the guns of the FW190 pilots until, on 13 November 1941, all but essential fighter operations over Europe were halted. Red Kite are delighted to introduce a major new landmark series of books on the Battle of Britain. The Battle of Britain Combat Archive Series forms the most comprehensive account ever of The Few’s gallant efforts. Focusing solely on RAF Fighter Command’s clashes with the Luftwaffe, the series covers every combat that took place on every day of the Battle of Britain. Using contemporary accounts such as combat reports, rarely seen squadron intelligence summaries and the newly released casualty reports, the author and his team of experts have broken down each day into its individual combats and assembled the claims, losses and first-hand accounts into a highly accessible format. These combats are illustrated with specially designed maps showing the amount of aircraft involved, the area that the engagement took place and the location of where the casualties came to earth. Each combat and casualty report is illustrated with a photo of the pilot wherever possible.

With this latest volume, we welcome Neil Robinson to our team of authors. Neil will be well known to most of you, having spent most of his career working in aviation publishing, and we look forward to working with him on more titles in the future. When we suggested having a go at the Spitfire V for his first book, I don’t think either of us quite grasped what a huge challenge that would be. Produced in greater numbers than any other Mark of Spitfire, the Mk V was flown by countless squadrons and units, manned by dozens of nationalities in all theatres of war. Where to start?!Volume Fourteen covers 16-23 September, a period when the weather took a turn for the worse and limited operations on both sides. Despite this, there are several important and rarely covered events such as the massacre of KG77’s Ju88s on it’s first operation with the new type on 18 September.

A new fighter capable of matching the performance of the FW190 was needed – urgently. The planned successors to the Spitfire Mk V were the Mk VII and Mk VIII, but they would take far too long to become operational. Fortunately, Rolls-Royce had experimented with fitting a Merlin 60 engine in their test-bed Spitfire in September 1941 and the increase in performance over the Mk V was significant. The Air Ministry took the decision to marry the tried-and-tested Mk V airframe with the new Merlin to bypass the delays in perfecting a new airframe and get a better Spitfire operational as soon as possible. The Spitfire Mk IX entered service nine months later, in June 1942 and went on to become, in the eyes of many pilots, the best of the breed. After the very positive reaction to our first Lancaster book in this series, we’re delighted to continue our RAF Bomber Command theme with this, the first of two books on the Short Stirling. For us, there was only ever one author ‘in the frame’ for this one and we’re delighted to say that Jonathan Falconer accepted the challenge and has produced a stunning tribute to this leviathan of the skies. For quite a few years, Simon Parry and Mark Postlethwaite have been building up a huge library of original WWII aviation photos, partly as a hobby but mainly to help provide photos for the books that they publish. With over 30,000 now in the collection, they realised that they had more than enough to produce a series of photo books on individual aircraft types and sub-types. They set out to make the series as ideally suited to modellers and artists as possible, so large photos, using A4 landscape format, and minimal text except for extended captions. Effectively their aim is to produce a 21st Century version of the Profile Publications series of books from the 1960s, using the latest technology to reproduce their wartime photos to the highest standard possible.After five years with SAM Publications he temporarily re-joined The Aviation Workshop, in April 2010, as Book Production Editor for their range of ‘On Target’ books, before joining forces with a local printer and starting the AIRfile range of camouflage and markings books.