The Bruneval Raid: Flashpoint of the Radar War. This item is unavailable.The Bruneval Raid: Flashpoint of the Radar War

One of the reasons the British won the 'radar war' with Nazi Germany was that we knew precisely how the enemy system worked. This was thanks to a daring commando raid on a German Wurzburg radar site at Bruneval in northern France. Ostensibly, the British raiders had attacked and destroyed the station, but in reality key components had been stolen and the whole set analysed by British scientists. (What the 'boffins' did not know was that the British paratroops had orders to kill them, rather than let them fall into German hands if the operation went wrong.) Plucked to safety by Royal Navy landing craft, with Germans in hot pursuit, the raiders achieved complete success.

George Millar won the DSO and MC during the Second World War. He fought in North Africa, was captured by the Germans but managed to escape back to England in time to join SOE. He was parachuted into France in June 1944 to coordinate resistance behind enemy lines. He wrote two volumes of wartime memoirs, Maquis and Horned Pigeon, then several sea stories (he is an accomplished yachtsman) before researching and writing The Bruneval Raid.