021710 - BATTLE OF BRITAIN COMBAT ARCHIVE Volume 16, 27 September 1940

By Simon W Parry

Announcing Volume 16 of the Battle of Britain Combat Archive Series – The most significant work on the Battle of Britain for 35 years.

The problem with most Battle of Britain history books is that they are based upon what other people have written, all originating with Dowding’s own summary of the Battle published in August 1941.  Over the course of the last 75 years, various authors have focused on particular days or events and others have followed, after all, it’s much easier to write about days where the research has already been done than to venture into unrecorded territory.

This has led to a gross over-simplification of the Battle and has also led to many errors being repeated over and over again.

A case in point being the 15th September 1940, Battle of Britain Day.  If the author of your favourite book tells you that this was the deciding day when huge waves of German bombers were sent in a final onslaught against London to defeat the RAF, and that the activity faded away from that day, then he (or she) has no idea what they’re writing about.

15th September, as far as the Luftwaffe was concerned, was just another day when the weather was decent enough to launch bombing raids on the capital.  They sent over just 25 bombers in the morning ‘assault’ and around 90 in the afternoon raid.  The RAF turned out in force, using paired squadrons to particular effect, and shot down a large amount of the raiders.

But the 15th September was nowhere near the climax of the Battle.  After a week of poor weather, the Luftwaffe once again launched large daylight formations of bombers and fighters over the south of England.  Increasingly large battles were fought on 24th , 25th  and 26th September, culminating in an epic day on 27th September when hundreds of fighters and bombers fought combats from Dover to Devon.

It is this day that is covered in Volume 16 of the Battle of Britain Combat Archive.  This is the first time that we have devoted a single volume to just one day.  But with every other publication treating the 27th as a mere sideshow to the Battle, this needed to be done.

With the usual blend of first hand accounts and all original research using contemporary documents from both sides, author Simon Parry and his team of experts have set the record straight on the historical significance of 27th September 1940 like no other publication to date.

Volume Sixteen contains:

• Over 100 original wartime photos
• 9 combat maps
• 1 Specially commissioned combat scene by Piotr Forkasiewicz, one of the world’s leading digital aviation artists.
• 128 pages.
• A4 format and printed full colour throughout