TY  - BOOK
AU  - Holland, James,
TI  - Big Week: the biggest air battle of World War Two 
SN  - 9780593077986
AV  - D785 .H65 2018
U1  - 940.544 23
PY  - 2018///.
CY  - London
PB  - Bantam Press, 
KW  - United States
KW  - Army Air Forces
KW  - History
KW  - World War, 1939-1945
KW  - Great Britain
KW  - Royal Air Force
KW  - Germany
KW  - Luftwaffe
KW  - World War (1939-1945)
KW  - fast
KW  - Aerial operations
KW  - Campaigns
KW  - Western Front
KW  - Military operations, Aerial
N1  - Includes bibliographical references and index
N2  - In the early days of 1944, as the build-up to D-Day intensified, an audacious plan was taking shape in the form of Operation Argument a brutal & systematic strategy to finally sledgehammer the Luftwaffe into submission and ensure the skies were clear for the Allied invasion of France later that summer. In one fatal stroke they planned to deplete not only the German air force, but also the aircraft and munitions industry which supported it. On Sunday 20th February, an airborne assault, the like of which had never before been seen, was unleashed. The Americans launched their first-ever thousand bomber raids by day while the RAF attacked by night. What followed over that week was one of the largest and most dramatic air battles ever witnessed. In the first ever narrative history of Big Week, historian James Holland recounts the story of that extraordinary and brutal battle, underpinned by painstaking research and analysis. In day-by-day and often hour-by-hour detail, he follows the fortunes of some of the men & women who took part on both sides; commanders, pilots, air crew, ground staff, and civilians, revealing in forensic and heart-stopping detail the conditions, fear and drama of war in the air. Big Week is the elemental story of bomber against flak gun, of fighter against fighter, in which tens of thousands of young men were pitted against each other in a punitive, bludgeoning clash of arms. It was one hell of a week
ER  -