Publisher Description
The birth of the Royal Air Force marked a pivotal moment in military history. World War I was frozen in the bloody stalemate of trench warfare, which gave strategic urgency to any means of directly attacking enemy resources and morale. The new technologies of air power held promise, and by 1917 German bombers had begun attacking British cities. Amid political debates led by Prime Minister David Lloyd George and Minister of Munitions Winston Churchill, the RAF was created as an independent force in spring 1918. After halting first steps, the RAF by the end of the war was launching effective bombing campaigns on industrial and military targets in western Germany. The RAF influenced its later allies and enemies in the development of air power, which in World War II would deliver massive destruction to the cities of Europe and Japan. This compact book shows a master historian at work.
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About Richard Overy
Richard Overy is a professor of history at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom and one of Britain’s most distinguished historians and an internationally renowned scholar of World War II. He is the recipient of the Hessell-Tiltman Prize, the Wolfson History Prize, the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize, and he is a Fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Historical Society. His many works include The Bombing War, Dictators, and The Morbid Age.
About Steven Crossley
Steven Crossley, a graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, has built a career on both sides of the Atlantic as an actor and audiobook narrator, for which he has won more than a dozen AudioFile Earphones Awards and been a nominee for the prestigious Audie Award. He is a member of the internationally renowned theater company Complicite and has appeared in numerous theater, television, film, and radio dramas.