This is the first account of the Luftwaffe and their allies from the liberation of Rome to the Axis surrender in Italy. It covers not only fighter combats but includes details of an Italian torpedo attack on Gibraltar.

“This international collaboration between air war historians is simply fantastic. . . . a deep-dive on the operations in a vast and very important theater of war.” —Air Classics During the final year of World War II, the defending Axis forces were steadily driven from southern skies by burgeoning Anglo-American power. This was despite the steady withdrawal of units to more demanding areas. This fifth volume of the series describes in detail the activities of the Allied tactical air forces in support of the armies on the ground as their opponents were steadily extracted from northern Italy and the Balkans for the final defense of the central European homeland. The book commences with coverage of the final fierce air-sea battles over the Aegean that preceded the advance northward to Rome and the ill-conceived British attempt to secure the Dodecanese islands following the armistice with Italy. The authors also deal fully and comprehensively with the advance northward following the occupation of Rome, and the departure of forces to support the invasion of France from the Riviera coast, coupled with the formation of a new Balkan Air Force in eastern Italy to pursue the German armies withdrawing from Yugoslavia and take possession of newly freed Greece. The effect of the creation within the same area of the US and RAF strategic forces to join the Allied Combined Bombing Offensive is also discussed. Includes photographs “Reflects the scope of a remarkable research effort and provides valuable detail that the reader is not going to find between two covers elsewhere.” —The NYMAS Review

Christian Jennings's At War on the Gothic Line tells the little-known story of the Allied effort to break the German defenses in Northern Italy—told through the eyes of the multi-national force that fought it. In the autumn of 1944, as Patton’s army paraded through Paris, another Allied force was gathering in southern Italy. Spearheaded by over 100,000 American troops, this vast, international army was faced with a grim task—break The Gothic Line, a series of interconnected German fortifications that stretched across the mountains of northern Italy. Striving to reach Europe’s vulnerable underbelly before the Red Army, these Allied soldiers fought uphill against entrenched enemies in some of the final and most brutal battles of the Second World War. In At War on the Gothic Line, veteran war correspondent and historian Christian Jennings provides an unprecedented look inside this unsung but highly significant campaign. Through the eyes of thirteen men and women from seven different countries, Jennings brings history to life as he vividly recounts the courageous acts of valor performed by these soldiers facing overwhelming odds, even as many experienced discrimination at the hands of their allies and superiors. Witness the courage of a young Japanese-American officer willing to die for those under his command. Lie in wait with a troop of Canadian fur trappers turned snipers. Creep along mountain paths with Indian warriors as they assault fortified positions in the dead of night. Learn to fear a one-armed SS-Major guilty of some of the most atrocious war-crimes in the European theater. All these stories and more pack the pages of this faced-paced, action-heavy history, taking readers inside one of the most important, and least discussed, campaigns of World War Two.

The Italian campaign was one of the most debated of the Second World War, splitting the American and British allies, and causing great disharmony. After the fall of Rome and the surrender of Italy, the invasion of Normandy led to the Italian campaign becoming a sideshow as the ‘D-Day Dodgers’ fought their way through Italy to the Alps against a grinding defence and extreme weather. In a sequence of 200 wartime photographs Simon Forty sums up the major events of the conflict – from the landings on Sicily to the crossing of the Po. Commanded first by Sir Harold Alexander and then Mark Clark, the Allied armies (US Fifth and British Eighth) drew men not only from Britain, the United States, France and Poland but from all over the Commonwealth – from Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and South Africa – as well as such other countries as Brazil, Czechoslovakia, Greece and Palestine. The devastation caused by the war in the cities, towns and countryside is part of the story, but perhaps the most powerful impression is made by the faces of the soldiers themselves as they look out from the Italian front of so long ago.

Provides a narrative to the conflict from 1943 until the final German surrender of 1945.