Mortal enemies in the skies over wartime Europe, Britain's Spitfire and Germany's Bf 109 were the definitive fighters of their day. In extraordinary detail, this book profiles both aircraft from their earliest development to their service histories and the air battles they fought. Packed with information -- including full specifications -- the variants, weapon systems, missions and unit operators of both types are fully examined. This important work of reference features an authoritative text and is superbly illustrated throughout with a wealth of superb period photos, colour artwork and detailed cutaways. Book jacket.

Innumerable books have been published on the two most famous fighter aircraft of all time, the Supermarine Spitfire and the Messerschmitt Bf109. But books setting out to tell the story of both aircraft are very much rarer - probably fewer than the fingers of one hand. Yet their joint story is one which bears retelling since both were essential to the air campaigns of World War Two.Incredibly, the men who designed them lacked any experience of designing a modern fighter. R J Mitchell had begun his career working on industrial steam locomotives, Willy Messerschmitt had cut his aeronautical teeth on light and fragile gliders and sporting planes. Yet both men not only managed to devise aircraft which could hold their own in a world where other designs went from state-of-the-art to obsolete in a staggeringly short time, but their fighters remained competitive over six years of front-line combat. Despite the different ways their creators approached their daunting tasks and the obstacles each faced in acceptance by the services for which they were designed, they proved to be so closely matched that neither side gained a decisive advantage in a titanic struggle. Had either of them not matched up to its opponent so well, then the air war would have been a one-sided catastrophe ending in a quick defeat for the Allies or the Axis powers, and the course of twentieth century history would have been changed beyond recognition.

This volume looks at the clash between the British Supermarine Spitfire and the German Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter planes during WWII, from their pre-war development to the decisive combat that made their stories inextricably intertwined.

The Supermarine Spitfire was indeed a remarkable aircraft. It was already a legend in the making when the first Mk I machines began to roll off the assembly lines. The Spitfire was one of the classic British fighters in which the famous few bravely faced the mighty Luftwaffe. Although the Messerschmitt Bf 109 was considered superior in certain areas of flight performance, it was the Spitfire that eventually prevailed and helped crush the numerically superior enemy. In this book the reader will find clearly marked areas of skin sections where flush riveting was used. The Spitfire Mk. IXs, as well as other models of the fighter, were often assembled using a variety of parts, including those originally designed for earlier versions of the fighter. About Top Drawings: This series of highly illustrated books present detailed scale drawings of aircraft and vehicles, with supporting color profile artwork. With detailed captions on the history, combat action and development of each machine, each volume is an exceptional reference tool for modelers.

This book examines and analyses the relationship between the RAF, the Free French Movement and the French fighter pilots in WWII. A highly significant subject, this has been ignored by academics on both sides of the Channel. This ground-breaking study will fill a significant gap in the historiography of the War. Bennett's painstaking research has unearthed primary source material in both Britain and France including Squadron records, diaries, oral histories and memoirs. In the post-war period the idea of French pilots serving with the RAF seemed anachronistic to both sides. For the French nation the desire to draw a veil over the war years helped to obscure many aspects of the past, and for the British the idea of French pilots did not accord with the myths of "the Few" to whom so much was owed. Those French pilots who served had to make daring escapes. Classed as deserters they risked court martial and execution if caught. They would play a vital role on D-Day and the battle for control of the skies which followed.