EAGLE DAY : The Battle of Britain, August 6 - September 15, 1940 by Collier, Richard

New York 1966, Dutton, US First edition, hard bound in dust jacket, 6x9, VG/VG , illus, end paper maps, order of battle of RAF & Luftwaffe, list of eyewitnesses., bibliog. ---------------------------------August 13, 1940 - Eagle Day - was the day chosen by Hermann Göring, Air Marshal of Hitler's Luftwaffe, to launch a crushing air attack which would annihilate the Royal Air Force and prepare the way for Nazi Germany's invasion of Britain. With this abortive attack, the Battle of Britain began, a battle in which a few hundred men and airplanes ( many of which were obsolete) struggled against staggering odds, against fear, fatigue and desperation, to turn the tide against Germany. It was this battle which moved Churchill to say, "Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few."----------------------------------------To compile this definitive study of the Battle of Britain, Richard Collier employed a staff of thirteen, traveling 30,000 miles in England, America and on the Continent, to put together over 400 eyewitness accounts of what happened in those few weeks. The story is told from both the British and the German points of view. Mr. Collier introduces us to those who led the attack and those who planned the defense, to the pilots of both the R.A.F. and the Luftwaffe, to the American volunteers and the exiled Polish airmen, to politicians and ordinary civilians. The experiences of hundreds of people are recorded, often in their own words, and the individual stories of approximately twenty others are developed in considerable detail.Probably no writer alive is more expert than Mr. Collier in the field of reportagei-in-retrospect. Mr. Collier does not simply write history; he recreates every minute of the ordeal, employing his meticulous research to describe the effect of every bomb that fell in an attack that took place a quarter of a century ago. Mr. Collier's chief strength is his ability to make the reader feel present at the scene of the action. He tells us, motion-by-motion, what it feels like to fly a Hurricane, a Spitfire or an ME 110 in combat, what it is like to bail out over the English Channel, or what the British actually felt as they anticipated the imminent landing of the Germans.Eagle Day is a book which makes one of the greatest battles of history come alive exactly as it was, a hair-raising story of courage and endurance.