Air Wars 1920-1939: The Development and Evolution of Fighter Tactics

Author(s): Philip MacDougall 

ISBN: 9781781555200
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The full story of how aircraft fighter tactics were developed in the years leading up to the Second World War.
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  • Profusely illustrated with many rare and unpublished photographs

  • Use of previously unpublished defence papers and global in exhaustive research

  • Original analysis with some startling conclusions


Spain (1936-9), China (1937 onwards), Mongolia (1939), Finland (1939-40) and France (1939-40) were a testing ground for a new approach to air tactics with western democracies and totalitarian states analysing the resulting lessons.

Attention in Air Wars 1920-1939: The Development and Evolution of Fighter Tactics is given to the means by which intelligence on aerial tactics was collected and why it was not always fully absorbed, resulting in many nations having to relearn the same lessons at the outset of the Second World War. Finland, during the Winter War, while not involved in Spain or any other air war of the time, better applied the lessons being learned than that of the Soviet Union, which had been directly involved in air wars fought over China, Mongolia and Spain.

In the case of Britain, not only were the lessons of Spain ignored, but so too that of its own experimental fighter unit, the AFDE (Air Fighting Development Establishment) that had been formed in 1934 and which was reinforcing the intelligence received from those real air war conflicts.



BOOK ISBN 9781781555200
FORMAT 234 x 156 mm
BINDING Hardback
PAGES 208 pages
PUBLICATION DATE 15 August 2016
TERRITORY World
ILLUSTRATIONS 5 maps and 64 black-and-white photographs

 

 





A graduate of the University of Lancaster and former lecturer at the University of Kent, Philip MacDougall has written extensively on the theme of nations preparing for war, delving into inter-war aviation records, looking at various air wars and how different nations interpreted the tactical lessons resulting from those conflicts. MacDougall has edited Kent Airfields in the Battle of Britain (Meresborough Books) and has written many articles and books on military aviation as well as naval support facilities.

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