Big Week: The Biggest Air Battle of World War II by James Holland offers a gripping and detailed account of one of the most pivotal air campaigns of WWII. Earning four stars for its thorough research and compelling narrative, Holland vividly brings to life the events of February 1944, when Allied forces launched a massive bombing offensive against Nazi Germany.

Holland’s ability to balance strategic analysis with personal stories from both sides of the conflict is what makes this book so engaging. While the sheer amount of detail can occasionally slow things down, the broader context he provides adds depth to the story. If you're into military history or aviation, Big Week is a fascinating read that sheds new light on a crucial moment in the war.

The book is titled Big Week, but really the author takes you from first the English bombing Germany and then the United States becoming active after Pearl Harbor. He takes you through the buildup of planes and how they change and the men who fly them. He also gives you the German side which was holding their own until we introduced the Mustang, that fighter took over the skies and with the bombers slowing down production the Germans were never able to compete with the amount of planes bombers and fighters that we were able to produce along with the men to fly the planes. The author takes you into the rooms with the Generals and some of their decisions one thinking that the war could be won with no ground troops that was a no go. Others felt later that the first Allied Air commander did not know how to use the Mustangs when they arrived, for the longest time they would not provide cover for the bombers, and though they could fly longer and hold two bombs he still would not use them. It would be after he is relived and a new commander takes over that they would be used to their full potential. The bombers would fly missions into Germany and into Italy sometimes they would be able to stop production and sometimes it would only slow down. The biggest thing is that the Germans were never able to make the changes to their planes to compete with the Mustang and they could not train piolets’ as the Americans could. The author leads you to the Big Week in February which would see more tonnage of bombs dropped than before. I found this to be a very good book about the air battle in Europe.

A fascinating account of the air war over Europe, which provided me with real insight into the strategic decision making, the constraints in materials and resources suffered by the Germans as a result of their confused command structure and disastrous leadership.

I gained a proper understanding of the impact of American fighters and the attrition of the bombing regimes.

Very well written, structured to maintain the reader's interest with stimulating switches between both the nations at war and the factions within them. Highly recommended

While addressing the main subject, the majority of the book deals with the air war in Europe leading up to the biggest air battle of World War II. The author does a very good job of addressing the strategy by both sides and the shortfalls that were created and in most cases carried on when it was not achieving the objective. He also addresses the advancements made by both sides in developing more effective aircraft and rockets. Holland focuses on a number of specific players at all levels on both sides. One of those is the actor Jimmy Stewart. In the end, he does a good job of summarizing what happenned to those individuals if they had already not died during the conflict.

I recommend this book for anyone who wants a n insight into the air war over Europe during World War II.

I received a free Kindle copy of Big Week: The Biggest Air Battle of WW II by by James Holland courtesy of Net Galley  and Grove Atlantic, the publisher. It was with the understanding that I would post a review on Net Galley, Goodreads, Amazon and my fiction book review blog. I also posted it to my Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus pages.

I requested this book as I have read a great deal about World War II, but not on this specific subject. This is the first book by the author that I have read.

"Big Week: The Biggest Air Battle of World War II" eBook was published in 2018 (November) and was written by James Holland. Mr. Holland is author or co-author of 13 non-fiction books and nine novels. 

I categorize this novel as ‘R’ because it contains scenes of Violence. The book covers the air war in Europe from mid-1943 until mid-1944.

While the focus is on the overall strategy of both the Allies and Germans during this period of time, there are also several side stories of individuals from both sides of the conflict. It addresses how the large egos interfered with good decisions with both sides.  

Some time is spent looking at Hitler and his indecisiveness which prevented the German engineering establishment from developing new weapons in a timely manner. Germany entered the war with the ME-109 in 1939. It was still flying it in 1945. The Allies had developed and deployed a series of ever better fighters over that same period. During that same period, the German pilots were coming out of flight school with fewer and fewer hours compared to the American pilots. 

This all led up to the "Big Week" when Allied air forces bombed Germany day and night for a solid week. The biggest air battle of World War II that gave the Allies air superiority for D-Day. 

I thoroughly enjoyed the 12 hours I spent reading this 400-page non-fiction book. I found this book to be very readable, not just dry facts and figures. I certainly learned a few things about the air forces of both sides. I think that the cover art is well chosen. I give this novel a 5 out of 5.

Further book reviews I have written can be accessed at https://johnpurvis.wordpress.com/blog/. 

My book reviews are also published on Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/31181778-john-purvis).

This is an interesting but not definitive description of the air battle over Europe during World War II. It is filled with good general information related to the planning and fighting that occured. One third to half of the book was dedicated to personally histories of individual pilots and planners that added nothing to the narrative. I skipped over most of them. Minor errors can be disrupting to the reading experience. Holland should know that the highest american award for bravery is the Medal of Honor not the commonly mistaken Congressional Medal of Honor.

An interesting look at the wonder and horror of the air war over Europe during WW II, in particular the "strategic" bombing efforts of the US's 8th air force and the night bombing of the RAF's Bomber Command. Holland's narrative is detailed and engaging, especially when he tells his tale via the words of actual combatants -- from the famous (Jimmy Stewart, bomber pilot and actor) to the every day fellow who bundled into a flight suit and soared five miles up into the sky in noisy, unheated, unpressurized, fuel and bomb laden hollow tubes propelled by iffy engines and mechanicals. Holland uses diaries and memoirs of the airmen, ground crews, chaplains, and generals of both sides (Allies and German).

"Big Week" paints a fascinating picture of those times and the people who lived them -- their motivations, their reasoning behind why they did what they did, and more. The deliberate decision of Harris and his Bomber Command to wreak indiscriminate terror, via high explosive and incendiary bombs, on the cities and population of Germany still appalls me - but no more than does the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States. Both of these reveal how easily the human spirit can be degraded by "strategic interests" and "patriotism."

Among the most troubling aspects of the book, for me, come at the end, when the after war lives of some of the characters are revealed. That some of the Nazi pilots (and I differentiate them from those German pilots who were not Nazis) continued in support of Nazism -- one becoming an attorney who defending Holocaust deniers and another joining a resurgent right wing fascist party, was sickening to me.

All in all, it's a good read for those interested in the geopolitics of the air war in Europe - its aims, its human costs (civilian and military), its monetary costs, and whether it was as effective in shortening the war as its proponents then and now proclaimed.

I have just finished reading an advanced galley of James Holland's upcoming "Big Week" kindly provided to me by the publisher. This history is a serviceable review of the state of the Combined Bomber Offensive against Germany in 1943-1945. The author writes with panache of aerial combat and the men, machines and technology deployed by the USAAF, the RAF, and the Luftwaffe in the air over the embattled Third Reich. It is balanced and doesn't fail to illuminate the critical issues in play as the Allies attempted to bring the Germans to their knees through Strategic Bombing. I have read extensively in this area for many years, so I am quite familiar with both the issues and personalities involved in the air war over the Reich. That said, this book really brings nothing new to the table, but for those who have not immersed themselves in the relevant literature, it is a good primer on this bloody and often misunderstood aspect of World War II.

An exhaustive account of the background to and execution of "Operation Argument", which took place during the third week of February 1944, as the combined Allied air forces, working from airbases in Britain and Italy, launched their first round-the-clock bomber offensive against Nazi Germany. This operation is better known in the USA's 8th Air Force official history as "Big Week".

By means of interviews, diary extracts and official records, historian James Holland provides a wealth of historical detail along with fascinating personal histories of many fighter and bomber pilots, ground crews and senior staff from the Luftwaffe as well as Britain and the USA's air forces. The part played by Germany's anti-aircraft defences the growth of its radar capabilities is given prominence and he also documents eyewitness accounts of the suffering of German civilians, as thousands of tons of bombs reduced their towns and cities to rubble.
For example, in a single night, RAF bombs killed almost as many people as died in the 8 months of the Luftwaffe's Blitz on London.

While the Allies' initial aim was to cripple German aircraft production, their long term plan was not only to draw the Luftwaffe into committing its' resources in defending German military/industrial targets, but also to allow them to gain air supremacy over Western Europe - a plan which was critical to the success of "Overlord", the landing of Allied troops in Occupied Europe in June 1944. This book details in depth, missions carried out by both American and British bomber and fighter pilots and numerous air battles fought by the Luftwaffe. The reader is given unique insights into the thoughts of the people involved in the bid for that supremacy and the incredible hardships suffered by aircrew on both sides.

In the months prior to "Big Week", the Allied bomber war was not turning out as planned. Daylight raids by the US Eighth Air Force and night-time bombing by the RAF deep into Germany had led to large numbers of planes and pilots being decimated and allied objectives falling far short of their targets. As D-Day drew closer, skies which were clear of enemy aircraft were vital to ensure the invasion's success and time was running out.

But, Germany's Luftwaffe was also in crisis, with severe shortages of fuel and a lack of properly trained pilots. With Luftwaffe pilots going into active duty with far less flying hours than their British and American counterparts, the strain on those still flying was immense. To add to their burden, Luftwaffe pilots had far less time off to recuperate than their Allied counterparts. Despite success on the Eastern front, the Luftwaffe had suffered crippling losses, particularly in the Mediterranean theatre. Despite these obstacles, German fighter pilots were achieving far more success than they should have against superior numbers of Allied planes.

Adolf Hitler's constant interference in aircraft production, particularly his insistence that it include giant bombers as well as fighters and that priority be given to his "Vengeance" weapons (the V1 and V2 rockets), hindered far more than it helped.
An even bigger problem was the breakdown of the relationship between Adolf Galland, the former fighter ace who was the general in command of all of the Luftwaffe's fighters in Europe and Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring. In 1943, their disagreements about how best to combat the Allied bombing of Germany culminated in Galland asking to be dismissed from his post and sent back to his unit. Göring accepted, but then changed his mind and apologised. Galland continued in his post, but this truce was not to last.

The Allies too faced problems such as long running arguments between senior British and American airforce officers on how the bombing campaign should be conducted, with the former determined they should be independent from the ever growing presence of American aircraft at British airfields. There was also the realisation, for many too long in coming, that to wage successful bombing campaigns, an even more pressing priority was the need for long range fighters to escort the massive bomber forces to and from their targets in Germany. Finally, the arrival of new aircraft - particularly the American long range P-51 Mustangs - and the adoption of superior battle tactics, began to give them the upper hand.

All these factors culminated in the largest air battle ever seen. Many believe this vital part of the Allied war effort has been forgotten, but Holland's book, which shows that "Big Week" should be considered one of the main turning points for the Allies in World War II, will go a long way to rectifying that situation.

My thanks go to the publisher, Grove Atlantic, and Netgalley for the chance to read this book in exchange for an unbiased review.