Jane's Battles with the Luftwaffe

by Bernard Dy

Article Type: Book Review
Article Date: November 21, 2002

Product Info

Title: Jane's Battles with the Luftwaffe
Authors: Theo Boiten and Martin Bowman
Publisher: Harper Collins
Availability: Amazon.com

A Curious Import

Jane's Battles with the Luftwaffe is a bit of an enigma. The book appears to be at first glance an oversized coffee table book filled with photos of the European air war of World War II. Where many such books do not promise depth as their strength, this one is a little different because it bears the Jane's badge. Jane's is a brand that many equate with quality resources for all things of military trivia and history. Readers digging into Battles with the Luftwaffe will find it somewhat like the B-24 Liberator so prevalent in its pages: it's a collection of some great features, but in some ways proves disappointing when put to the test.

Cover art

The volume appears to have originally been compiled by British authors and researchers. The spelling of some words is a giveaway. Whatever their origin, authors Theo Boiten and Martin Bowman clearly put tremendous effort into their research for the book. The subtitle is accurate: The bomber campaign against Germany 1942-45. Boiten and Bowman interviewed combatants involved in the strategic bombing of Germany. The book discusses a variety of topics but focuses primarily on the Allied heavy bombers, specifically those used by the United States' Eighth Air Force, and the defending German forces.

Pictures Galore

The book's gems are its hundreds of rare photos. Lovers of the B-17 Flying Fortress and B-24 Liberator will feast on the offering. Most of them are external views with little attention paid to the internal stations, and some are absolutely gruesome to look at, such as the in-flight captures of aircraft hit by flak. There are also several photos of bullet riddled bombers that crashed or crash-landed. The B-26 Marauder and the P-47 Thunderbolt make appearances, but the B-17 and B-24 are the big representatives for the Eighth.

The Germans get a little more variety and in addition to the Bf 109 and Fw 190, there are some nice pictures of the Me 410, Bf 110, and some of the Luftwaffe jets. The book differentiates itself from the bulk of the airplanes-only coffee table brethren by also taking detours to visit the lives of the Luftwaffenhelfer, the young men that manned the German flak cannons. Battles with the Luftwaffe occasionally looks too at the civilians affected by the war. There are some shots of bomb damaged areas, some where curious civilians would visit a crash site, and the amusing photo of the Dutch family posing next to a P-47 drop tank near their home. There's also a nice spread dedicated to aviation efforts of the Third Reich ally Bulgaria. This section includes a photo of the Avia 534 biplane, an interesting item indeed.

Rough Passage

The photos alone could sell Battles with the Luftwaffe, but there's more. The text is divided into eight chapters and the authors pack each with details and stories about bloody air battles and narrow escapes. This narrative thread is unfortunately the book's weak point. What Boiten and Bowman write is not necessarily bad or wrong, but the book desperately needs an editor to organize it, add sub headings, clean up the several typos, and collate some of the data avalanche into charts and tables. Reading the main text is like following a giant run-on sentence. Readers pursuing it will get a seemingly endless stream of statistics and anecdotes, generally but not always following a chronological order.

The authors, for example, will select particular bomber from a mission and describe the crew's experience as they defend against German fighters and then attempt to strike their ground targets. Normally, a collection of such stories would have aviation enthusiasts salivating, but Battles with the Luftwaffe can confound as much as it exhilarates. Each story seems to step in after another, with no transitions to relate them. Inconsistencies mar the work. Sometimes a bomber's history is followed thoroughly, and readers learn of the crew, whether they managed to hit their target, how many German fighters they claimed, and either how they were shot down or if they made it home. Other times the fates of the bomber's crew remain unknown, and there is no explanation when some of the details are missing. The research necessary to determine all this information and the difficulty in sorting out victory claims and bombing success are mountainous obstacles, and for this I again commend the authors. The best passages in the text even identify who downed a bomber and how they did it. But more often the authors leave the reader hanging from one story and abruptly move to the next.

Statistics such as bomber identification numbers, dates, crew names, and claimed and actual victories are thrown into the fast-moving stream of text, and this doesn't help make any of it valuable or memorable. The authors list Donald Caldwell's The JG-26 War Diary as one of their sources, and a good one it is, but they failed to follow Caldwell's example of using charts to organize data and this choice hurts Battles with the Luftwaffe's value as a reference tool. There are also several occasions where acronyms and abbreviations are used without full disclosure of their meaning. The presence of some glossaries and an index help but only lightly blunt these criticisms.

Getting Personal

If there is any organizational credit Battles with the Luftwaffe's text earns, it is in the way it synchronizes with the outstanding photos and sidebars. When a passage discusses a particular aircraft or pilot, there is often a picture of that very vehicle or person nearby. It's also common for a sidebar to accompany the text and photo, and most of these are quotes from the pilots that add tremendous personality to the book. They save the book that would otherwise be a conglomeration of great pictures and overbearing text and turn it into a treasure chest filled with veteran voices.

The sidebars are a joy to read and that is how I'd recommend the book be enjoyed, by viewing the photos and reading the captions and sidebars. The rest is there if needed and if the reader has patience. The personal quotes deliver humor, horror, and wisdom, and the best way to describe them is to let a few speak for themselves.

A mist of gasoline was floating forward onto the flight deck…During that time I got soaked from head to foot with gas. The slipstream started to clear up the inside. I turned around to get on the flight deck to tell the pilot we had been hit bad and were losing gas fast. Before I could move…20mm shells went off under my feet, wounding me in the right foot and both legs. The blow lifted me up and hurt my back and I fell on my back and on the catwalk. Then I saw a blinding flash and I was on fire from head to foot. I felt my face burning and that was all I remembered as I thought I was dying. —Theodore J. Myers, B-24 top turret gunner

I crank the nose turret to the "0" position, push the bar handle holding the two tiny doors closed down to full open, slip my hands under the second navigator's armpits and pull on him. His head falls back against my right shoulder. I look at Miller and vomit into my oxygen mask and nearly drown from it. I have never seen a human head hit by a shell…All this time the aircraft is making a slow, wide turn to the right because its controls are shot away and the number three engine is knocked out…The stun of the incident is blown away by the sound of the three rings on the bail out bell. —2nd Lt. Robert L. Ferrell, B-24 navigator

Some hotheads who attacked the 4-mot formations alone had successes, but also had to pay the price for their dash. Old hands knew that bomber formations had to be attacked in at least sections of flight strength in order to spread the defensive fire. We too therefore assembled small units before attacking the bombers. Operating these fighting formations sometimes led to problems. We tried a formation in echelon with only 50-80 meters between each aircraft. Although protection to the rear was partially lost, this was not so important thanks to our superior speed, and the closing up for the attack was quicker. —Lt. Fritz R G Muller, Me 262 jet pilot

The quotes are quite harrowing, especially those of the bomber crews. They aren't perfect, and an editor's hand would have proven useful again. Sometimes the authors fail to identify the speaker's type of aircraft and although they usually date the quote, they don't always identify if that is the quote's origin date or if the date pertains to an event the quote discusses.

Still, the point of the book is verifiable and intact. Through quotes and pictures Battles with the Luftwaffe tenders many reminders of the incredible sacrifice made by young men on both sides. It's heartbreaking to see a group picture of a bomber crew only to find in the text or caption that all hands were lost, and equally sad to see a sixteen-year-old Luftwaffenhelfer only to turn the page and see a decimated anti-aircraft battery.

Is Battles with the Luftwaffe a worthy purchase? That's hard to answer. Jane's should be a little embarrassed at the befuddling presentation of text in the book, well beneath its potential despite its hidden depth. The hefty US$44.95 price doesn't help prospective buyers overlook the poor editing, but the book is available more cheaply from the Military Book Club and possibly too from discount outlets. As valuable as the photos and stories are for WWII fans, the book doesn't make pretenses about being a critical analysis, so there are better volumes available for those with scholarly interest in the strategic bombing campaign. Battles with the Luftwaffe though is still unique in looking at several sides of the conflict, and at times a fantastic read. It is a product worth considering for collectors and aviation fanatics, particularly if they can snatch it for a good price.

Relevance to Combat Simulations

The photos will serve as the usual guides to digital modelers building aircraft for their favorite extensible sims like Il-2 Sturmovik and the Combat Flight Simulator series. The personal recollections of Battles with the Luftwaffe may help creative souls with access to scenario builders.

We're not at the point yet in the simulation world where we can emulate a bomber crew holding their ship together before bailing out and resisting capture behind enemy lines. Some of the missions in games like Operation Flashpoint show us that a sim with an "escape and evade" component might arrive someday. But it's not here yet, and it's also hard to imagine anyone putting together an anti-aircraft simulation where players tour the life of a flak gunner. Until then, Battles with the Luftwaffe is capable inspiration for those cranking up European Air War, MicroProse B-17 Flying Fortress, Jane's Attack Squadron, War Birds, Aces High, Over the Reich, or any sim where Fw 190s and B-17s can clash. Several of the Luftwaffe recollections do include some notes about tactics in approaching bomber formations and may be useful for some players.

Battles with the Luftwaffe was published in 2001 by Harper Collins. Interested readers can buy it at Amazon.com, ISBN 0-00-711363-3.



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