By Rick Atkinson
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "A most excellent book... The emphasis all through is at the human drama of fellows at war."—The Washington publish booklet World
The liberation of Europe and the destruction of the 3rd Reich is an epic tale of braveness and calamity, of miscalculation and enduring triumph. during this first quantity of the Liberation Trilogy, Rick Atkinson indicates why no sleek reader can comprehend the last word victory of the Allied powers and not using a snatch of the nice drama that spread out in North Africa in 1942 and 1943.
Opening with the bold amphibious invasion in November 1942, An military at Dawn follows the yankee and British armies as they struggle the French in Morocco and Algiers, after which tackle the Germans and Italians in Tunisia. conflict via conflict, an green and infrequently poorly led military steadily turns into a good scuffling with force. At the center of the story are the intense yet wrong commanders who come to dominate the battlefield: Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley, Montgomery, and Rommel.
Brilliantly researched, wealthy with new fabric and bright insights, Atkinson's vivid narrative tells the deeply human tale of a huge conflict for the way forward for civilization.
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Extra info for An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943 (The Liberation Trilogy, Volume 1)
Sample text
This built-in magnetism would affect any compass and cause the aircraft to fly off-course. There was, however, a very primitive solution to this problem. After the missile was finally assembled at the launching point, it was then taken into a specially built non-magnetic building. Inside the hanger crews carefully aligned the airframe onto the magnetic heading it was meant to fly. Then, using wooden mallets, personnel would beat those parts around the fuselage near the compass. This caused the molecules in the sheet-steel structure to realign themselves with the Earth’s magnetic field, and in the direction of the line of flight.
He handed each of us a sheet of paper on which was typed ‘pilot’s notes’, which explained how to start up and fly the aircraft. We were each led to an aircraft and climbed into the cockpit and studied the notes. After completing the study we reported back to the Wing Commander, who asked us if there were any problems? We both said no, to which he replied ‘then fly the bloody things’. The CO took EE214 and I flew EE213, and we experienced very little trouble. We each had two flights that day, and a further two the following day.
Here, the young aviators would learn to fly the aircraft they would use on operations. By 1944 RAF fighter pilots would enter squadron service with a minimum of 270 hours of flight time. They also benefited from enhanced tactics and weapons training in the form of Combat Training Wings. Wing leaders, squadron commanders or junior officers with potential were also nurtured during a posting to the Fighter Leaders’ School. For the pilots of No. 616 Sqn in the summer of 1944, experience was not an issue.