Wing Leader.

Product Information

Red Kite are delighted to introduce a major new landmark series of books on the Battle of Britain. The Battle of Britain Combat Archive Series forms the most comprehensive account ever of The Few’s gallant efforts. Focusing solely on RAF Fighter Command’s clashes with the Luftwaffe, the series covers every combat that took place on every day of the Battle of Britain. Using contemporary accounts such as combat reports, rarely seen squadron intelligence summaries and the newly released casualty reports, the author and his team of experts have broken down each day into its individual combats and assembled the claims, losses and first-hand accounts into a highly accessible format. These combats are illustrated with specially designed maps showing the amount of aircraft involved, the area that the engagement took place and the location of where the casualties came to earth. Each combat and casualty report is illustrated with a photo of the pilot wherever possible. Neil’s suggestion was to break the photos down into sections, mainly based around units, squadrons and nationalities. We have deliberately excluded the SEAC photos from this book as we plan to produce a separate title to cover all RAF SEAC fighters. Today, Terry’s enterprise, SkyGrid Studio,specializes in aviation-history-focused research, illustration, design, and editorial work for clients ranging from aviation-speciality publishers and scale-model manufacturers to museums and aircraft restorers. He has consulted on a number of projects with the Airfix design team over the past decade – the most personally rewarding of which was the firm’s new-tool 1/72 scale Beaufighter series.

After several years of writing articles for aviation enthusiast and aircraft modelling magazines, he was appointed editor of IPMS Magazine in the mid-1980s, after which in the early 1990s he self-published his own magazines, ‘Quarter Scale Modeller’ (for 1/48 scale aircraft modellers) and ‘Seventy Second Scale Modeller’ (for 1/72 scale aircraft modellers), for two years, until his first proper ‘commercial’ editing job in 1995, editing ‘Military ModelCraft’, covering figure, AFV and vehicle modelling, despite all his interest and knowledge being in aviation topics. Then in late 1998, he took over editorship of ‘Scale Aircraft Modelling’ from the (then) owner, Alan W Hall, during which time he also introduced and edited a new range of enthusiast titles for Guideline Publications – the ‘Camouflage & Markings’ and ‘Combat Colours’ ranges of books. As with all the books in this series, we’ve enhanced the photos to pull out the shadow detail and have added arrows and letters to identify points of interest. The Spitfire V was originally designed as an interim variant. Based on the Mk I/II airframe, but powered by a Merlin 45, the Mk V entered service in early 1941, and was marginally better than the Me 109F at high altitude and more heavily armed (Mk Vb). The Mk Vc appeared in October 1941, fitted with the universal ‘c’ wing (developed for the Mk III), which could carry either eight machine guns, four 20mm cannon, or two cannon and four machine guns – the two cannon/four machine gun combination being the most common.With this latest volume, we welcome Neil Robinson to our team of authors. Neil will be well known to most of you, having spent most of his career working in aviation publishing, and we look forward to working with him on more titles in the future.

As always, we’ve optimised every photo to help the reader look deep into the shadows to see these features and have labelled them where necessary. When Spitfire Mk V pilots first met the FW190s of JG26 in August 1941, it immediately became apparent their old Spitfires were completely outclassed by the Luftwaffe’s new fighter. Losses rose rapidly as more Spitfires fell to the guns of the FW190 pilots until, on 13 November 1941, all but essential fighter operations over Europe were halted. Simon is now one of Britain’s leading aviation historians, but his roots are in Surrey where he began his research into the battles and aircraft crashes in the county 30 years ago, a time it was possible to interview many witnesses to the events. His interest in the air war lead him to become a professional researcher at the National Archives, undertaking a variety of assignments for those not able to conduct their own investigations. Since the publication of his first book in 1987 he has focused his attentions on the editing and production of over 40 aviation books for publishers. He is also one of Europe’s most experienced aviation archaeologists, contributing to and appearing in several TV documentaries for the BBC, Channel 4 and others. Specially commissioned combat scenes by Piotr Forkasiewicz, one of the world’s leading digital aviation artists.

Growing up in the late 1950s/early 1960s, Neil Robinson had an interest in aeroplanes from an early age, which expressed itself by him spending most of his paper round money buying aviation magazines such as ‘Flying Review’ and ‘Aircraft Illustrated’ and Airfix and Frog kits. Hanging onto every word of W R ‘Bill’ Matthews’ ‘Model Talk’ in ‘Flying Review’ and Alan W Hall’s conversions in ‘Airfix Magazine’, he continued to have an interest in aeroplanes and model making throughout his teens and joined IPMS (UK) in 1969. Having covered the wartime Mk.I and III in the previous two books, this third book completes the Lancaster’s wartime career* by looking at the other Mks that flew with RAF Bomber Command. These other Mks are the radial engined Mk.II, the Canadian built Mk.X, the experimental Mk.VI, the Dambusters’ Type 464 and the Grand Slam carrying B.I (Special). Produced in smaller numbers for various reasons, these Mks rarely get a lot of coverage in mainstream books so we’ve tried to do them justice in this volume.