Military Model Scene

Title: Normandy 1944
Author: Julian Hale
Publisher: Osprey
ISBN: 978-1-4728-6580-9

The 'Transportation Plan' to cut D-Day communications, number 54 in the Air Campaign series from Osprey. A 96-page soft-cover book, with artwork by Graham Turner.
This one follows a fairly standard structure for this series, with an Introduction to set out the background, along with some of the debate about the rights and wrongs of the campaign, in reparation for the Normandy landings. A chronology of key events starts back in 1938 when SNCF was formed for French railways, and goes on through to late July, 1944. Then the Attacker's Capabilities covers organisation, intelligence, the Allied Expeditionary Air Force, their aircraft, US Ninth Air Force and more. The Defender's Capabilities cover the target, the French rail network, German day and night fighters, flak, command and more. Then it sets out the Campaign Objectives before getting into the detail of the Campaign itself. Tables show how different targets were allocated to RAF and USAAF medium bombers and others to RAF and USAAF strategic bomber forces. It tackles bombing accuracy, and illustrated with plenty of archive photos, some detailed target maps, battle scenes and more, all leading into a final Aftermath and Analysis.
I always think hindsight is a huge advantage, the commanders at the time had to make decisions on only the information they had available at the time. The different Allied commanders had different ideas on what would be best, and of course there were French civilian casualties as a result of many of the raids. Read this and decide for yourself if you think they got it right or not. I found it an interesting read, and of course the Normandy landings were ultimately successful. No undertaking as huge as the invasion of NW Europe was going to be is simple, and not every decision will be right or wrong. The idea is interesting and reading how the allies went about it is a really interesting element of the invasion of 1944.
Thanks to Osprey for the review copy.

Robin