Bomber Command - Max Hastings (Paperback) 08-07-2021 Winner of Somerset Maugham Award 1980 (UK).

Bomber Command is journalist and military historian Sir Max Hastings' compelling account of one of the most controversial struggles of the Second World War. RAF Bomber Command's offensive against the cities of Germany was one of the epic campaigns of the Second World War. More than 56,000 British and Commonwealth aircrew and 600,000 Germans died in the course of the RAF's attempt to win the war by bombing. The struggle began in 1939 with a few primitive Whitleys, Hampdens and Wellingtons, and ended six years later with 1,600 Lancasters, Halifaxes and Mosquitoes razing whole cities in a single night. Max Hastings traced the developments of area bombing using a wealth of documents, letters, diaries and interviews with key surviving witnesses. Bomber Command is, in turn, a fascinating, meticulously-researched, and vivid assessment of the RAF's integral role in the Second World War. 'A brilliant tour-de-force' - Times Literary Supplement