Finest Hour – July 2019

five-zero; climb to Angels two-zero; bandits are in your right two o’clock”). This offered the freedom to intercept wherever see ...

Roughly two-thirds of all fighters sent to France were lost, with many just abandoned in various states of repair. Equally worry ...

Royal Navy no less strong, and the British Army far more prepared. All this argued that the balance would swing in Britain’s fav ...

Pivoting C hurchill followed the battles closely, and many Cabinet discussions focused on pilot training and fighter production. ...

CHURCHILL’S GREATEST TRIUMPH: BOMBER COMMAND BY RODDY MACKENZIE “The real cause of Germany’s defeat was the failure of the Germa ...

Eighth”) of the United States Army Air Force (USAAF) joined these forces in the UK on 17 August 1942. Of Bomber Command’s 125,00 ...

only way to defeat the Nazis was to destroy Germany’s ability to wage war. What would have been unethical was losing the war, a ...

BOMBER COMMAND The Chief of Air Staff, Sir Charles Portal, asked Harris for an immediate rebuttal, persuaded Churchill to with- ...

Roddy MacKenzie is a retired Canadian lawyer and son of a Bomber Command pilot. This article is based on his 29 January 2019 add ...

...

...

I n his seminal article Is Strategy an Illusion? Richard Betts opined: “strategy is a series of relationships.”^1 Effective rela ...

CHURCHILL AND PORTAL Portal was marked afterwards by Sir Hugh Trenchard, the “Father of the Royal Air Force,” for higher office. ...

CHURCHILL AND PORTAL a joint officer. He refused to play inter-service politics, if it would detract from the overall fight. Sec ...

ing overseas, there was a vast staff and defense network inflating the numbers compared to domestic commands. Portal continued: ...

CHURCHILL AND PORTAL (ii) that a common expansion plan is necessary if maximum effort is to be obtained with the forces availabl ...

F ollowing the Second World War, the claim was made by Walt Disney and Alexander P. de Seversky that the film Victory Through Ai ...

Above Alexander de Seversky and Walt Disney study story board Above right Shooting script for the film Victory Through Air Power ...

ty machine got hold of a tidbit and cultivated it to such a point that myth moved into the realm of accepted truth. As a histori ...

Above Publicity poster for Victory Through Air Power Left Clementine and Winston Churchill attend the 1943 Quebec Conference; Ma ...