Thios is another flop by Alfred Price. The guy is a scholar in World War II, but he just can't write compelling books. TARGET BERLIN is boring, altough it tries heroically to give a general view from all people involved (including some ground witenesses). But the final result is not pleasant at all.

The Amazon people had to hunt this book down for me and the cost was worth it.

It is a detailed account, almost a minute at a time of both sides, of the first USAAF raid on Berlin.

I had read a lot on the subject, this was better than the rest - the depth of detail is stunning.

but frankly how likely is that..??? This is a re- print of material that originally appeared in 1977, but having said that, this is still better than the plethora of new volumes on the subject being cheaply thrown together by authors you've never heard of (Caygill, Lowe etc) and publishing companies eager to make a quick buck. However, if you've read anything at all by Price in the last twenty years most of this will be familiar to you, eg. Ernst Schröder's account of the December 17 Sturm mission flown by JG 300 or Oskar Romm's account of his Sturmjäger career with IV./JG 3. Price has a marvellous ability to regurgitate his material in whatever project he turns his hand to.. for instance the chapter on JG 6 over Normandy in this tome appears in his lastest Air Combat compilation, while large portions also appear in 'Last year of the Luftwaffe..' and the Air battles books. One or two new photos appear in this edition but really the work could have done with an overhaul in this department with many of the photos being reproduced on a multitude of occasions subsequent to their first appearance in 1977 ( Red 19 anyone...yawn...). There is new material being presented by authors out there but not by this particular writer who appears to have given up on serious Luftwaffe research some time ago. Sad to say that the best single volume on the Fw 190, Peter Rodeike's Jagdflugzeug 190 is not carried by Amazon.com

This book does a great job of breifly reviewing the development of the FW190 and it's many variants. It also presents some brief examples of the FW190 in combat,some tactics, and Pilot interviews.

I was disappointed that it did not present more interviews and tactics. It almost appears that the information included was left over from prior research efforts by the author and assembled to publish a new book.

This book does a great job of introducing and describing the German WWII Focke Wulf-190 in terms of design, history and combat service. Also included are personal experiences of ex-pilots and plenty of b/w photographs (some of which I haven't seen elsewhere). I especially liked the interviews with the main people from the original FW-190 design team (including Kurt Tank, the 'father' of the FW-190) which provides a rare look at the thoughts and objectives of the fighter's designers.

Overall, there is lots of well-organized information and the book should satisfy all but the most demanding aviation enthusiasts. The only fault I found is the lack of colour plates (for scale modellers), but if this is what you are after, I'd recommend 'FW-190 Aces of the Western Front' and 'FW-190 Aces of the Eastern Front'. While not perfect, this book is the one I'd choose if I only bought one book on the FW-190.

I found that Mr. Price spent more time on tactics and the aircraft itself than the pilots that flew it to 5 victories. I must admit I'm a bit bias having read Mr. Weal's BF109D/E aces book beforehand and was therefore hoping Mr. Price's book would follow the same writing style. I was disappointed. There had to be more than the 10 pilots Mr. Price focused on that achieved 5 victories in this marque of Spitfire.

Most of the Ospery titles have been very good. But this one was lacking something. It needed to cover more of the pilots who flew the planes rather than the plane. There were some BOB aces that weren't mention who did quite well.

The Ospery series is one of the best available, and well worth looking up. This book though doesn't cover the aces well enough.

Alfred Price is the doyen of Spitfire authors, having published at least a dozen books on the aircraft, so it was probably hard for him to come up with new angles to cover. In this book he succeeds admirably, covering the combat use of the first two versions of the Spitfire, and giving brief bios of several important aces who flew the aircraft. Price covers both the build-up to the Battle of Britain, and the Spitfire's important part in that epic struggle. Best of all is the visual material. Among the many photos of pilots and aircraft are several I haven't seen before. There are forty well executed color side profiles of aces' Spitfires; although the Dark Green and Dark Earth color schemes of most of the aircraft can get a bit boring, they are an invaluable aid, particularly to modelers. A fine job.

Price has a way of taking five old books and making a new one out of them. I still have his book 'Pictorial History of the Luftwaffe' which I purchased in 1969. I felt compelled to write across the first page: Not worth reading! Nothing has changed.

Price takes a new and innovative approach to the study of the German armed forces under the Nazis and rewrites the book on it. He does not shy away from recognising strengths and breadth of vision of Germany's military heirarchy whilst at the same time deploring the moral anarchy of the Nazi regime. All of this is delivered in crisp, clear, authoratative prose. The scholarship of the work stands clear. If only analysts of this capability and foresight were available to the Allies in 1940 ! The war might have been over sooner.

Although this is still a good book I think that the author should of split this series up into more than two books. He doesn't go into depth with each subject but rather just skimms the surface giving a brief description. For the money I think I would buy something a little better; something that has more texture to the subjects.

This 96 page soft cover book gives an overview of this famous British WWII fighter and the aces who flew it.

Separate chapters cover development, modification and operational use in North-West Europe, Malta, North Africa and other areas including Australia. There is a chapter on aerial warfare tactics which gives a facinating insight into the practical problems and solutions employed by an ace in Malta. The problem of overclaiming by pilots the number of enemy aircraft shot down is illustrated in the chapter dealing primarily with operations in Northern Australia. The last chapter gives an operational biography of the top 12 Spitfire Mk V aces.

The text is well illustrated with colour paintings, scale drawings and a large number of rarely seen b/w photos. The 12 pages of colour paintings depicts individual aces aircraft in profile and ace pilots in flying gear.

I was disappointed by the lack of an index and bibliography/reference.

I recommend this book to readers who have an interest in aviation and/or WWII in general.

The contents of the book could be summarized rather short: if those nazis had listened to me, we could have won the war. no feelings of remorse, no political responsibilty. general Deichmann appears to be one of those military leaders that made the tragedy of ww2 possible.

One must have caution when reading an Alfred Price book. Some of them are great, some of them are junkie. This one here belongs to the second category!

After the Second World War German military personnel were interrogated by Americans about their experiences on the Eastern Front. The reasons for this was to provide intelligence for a possible war against Russia. These studies must have recently been made public as there are a number of them released in book form.

The author of this book or more correctly the author of a series of documents in 1953 which were made into a book is a former Luftwaffe Lieutenant General.

The book is a rather dry discussion of a number of aspects of using aircraft in support of an army. Most of the book is devoted to talking about reconnaissance planes and is rather dry. The rest of the book looks at the use of aircraft for the direct support of army operations. The author indicates a number of things about the tactics of the Luftwaffe in the war. He indicates that the biggest success of the German Air force in the war was the use of planes to prevent movement of troops to and away from the battlefield. The use of places to attack infantry positions in general was not as successful and he is critical of the use of larger aircraft in this role. The editor of the book in fact makes an interesting point about allied operations in Western Europe after the Normandy invasion. By that time the allies had complete control of the skies and "tank killer" aircraft roamed far and wide. It seems that although during the war claims were made that vast numbers of German tanks were destroyed by aircraft the reality is that very few were. This strengthens the authors view that the main role of aircraft was to prevent the supply of troops and their movement.

Towards the end of the book the author bemoans the fact that Germany created an air force that was designed to support its army. In Britain and the United States a strategic air forces of heavy bombers was created with the role of destroying the productive capability of the enemy. The author argues that to destroy a factory will destroy far more tanks than can be done by an equivalent use of force on the battlefield. This view was something which was echoed by other Luftwaffe generals including Galland. The reality is however that the Germans had created a strategic air force they would not have defeated France in 1940