AIR WAR ITALY 1944 – 1945 – The Axis Air Forces from the Liberation of Rome to the Surrender

This book tells the previously untold story of the Luftwaffe and their allies, the Aeronautica Nazionale Repubblicana, from the liberation of Rome to the Axis surrender in Italy.

In the face of Anglo-American air supremacy, crippling fuel shortages and mutual mistrust these two air forces struggled to impede the Allied advance up the Italian peninsula.

Air War Italy draws on the archives of Britain, Italy, Germany, the USA and Canada as well as the recollections, diaries and logbooks of participants on both sides.

It is probably the first book about any World War II air campaign to use radio intercept data and ULTRA decrypts so extensively, permitting the reconstruction of a highly detailed diary of German and Italian air operations day-by-day

Air War Italy covers not only fighter combats but includes a mass of previously unpublished information on harassment missions by moonlight; freelance nightfighters; an Italian torpedo attack on Gibraltar; clandestine agent- dropping flights, the radar-controlled bombing of a British HQ and the arrival of German jets in Italy.

 There is new material on camouflage and markings, around 150 photographs and over 30 aircraft colour profiles plus maps, airfield plans and orders of battle.