Epic of Flight. The RAF at War

The RAF at War is a Time-Life aviation book included in the Epic of Flight series. When Britain went to war in 1939, its air force had quadrupled to a strength of 118,000 regulars. However it had not maintained parity with Germany. The Luftwaffe, by now an aerial armada with more than 500,000, outnumbered the RAF several times over in both pilots and planes. A year later German bombers would demolish the parliamentary debating chamber where in 1934 Churchill had implored the nation to make greater haste in rearming, given the intelligence they had on the German buildup. This book tells the story of the RAF at war – really, the story of a nation mobilized, and preparing and fighting for its very existence.