Back Cover Material

‘...packed with drama, incident and great characters. Adam claasen has done Second World War history a real service by telling brilliantly the story of the Anzacs’ enormous contribution to the greatest air battle ever fought.’

PATRICK BISHOP

In the summer of 1940 the Luftwaffe locked horns with the RAF in a life-and-death struggle for mastery of the skies over southern England. Success for Germany would knock Britain out of the war and give Adolf Hitler a free hand for his assault on the Soviet Union. Success for the RAF would bring an end to the German advance to the west and ultimately facilitate the D-Day landings four years in the future.

Thus the fate of the Allied war effort lay in the hands of those whom Winston Churchill dubbed ‘The Few’. What is less well known is that the second-largest foreign contingent in Fighter Command was drawn from the British Common wealth’s southern most Dominions: New Zealand and Australia. One hundred and seventy-one Anzac airmen were thrust head long into a ferocious air battle that would put their skills, resolve and character to the ultimate test. The talc of their place in the Battle of Britain, along with their personal stories, friendships, successes, losses and fears arc told in detail for the first time in Dogfight.

DR ADAM CLAASEN is a senior lecturer in modern history and international relations at Massey University. He has a doctorate from the University of Canterbury, is a Smithsonian Institution fellowship recipient, and in 2006 was a Fullbright Visiting Scholar at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. He teaches and researches primarily on the Second World War and the role of air power in war, and is the author of Hitler’s Northern War.