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The Bader wing
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Hardcover
First published June 21, 2007
About the author
John Frayn Turner
61 books3 followersJohn Frayn Turner is a British author specializing in military history.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 15, 2025
Exciting tactical accounts but no strategy
I come to this book having been educated by John Terraine and a YouTube channel ( "Lord Hardthrasher") to think that Bader was talented, astonishingly courageous and completely wrong about the "numbers game" and the support from Leigh-Mallory was equally mistaken if not politically motivated. I hope it will offer a correction or at least a counter point to consider. I was not able to find that. The tactical descriptions are exciting and arouse very proper admiration and gratitude for the fighters of the RAF and allies. But there is no discussion of the strategic position, the competing visions of the Dowding system and the reality of the way the battle needed to be fought. Was the Big Wing a good idea? We're its objectives really appropriate to the battle? Was it appropriate to add time and fuel forming up for an attack when the result was an unwieldy formation in which the attackers "queued up" and got in each others' way? I was hoping for that analysis (and also for an explanation of the chain of command which engendered the frustration so often expressed). I didn't find it.
The book was not what I hoped for. It confirmed my first conclusions and it did so without having really attempted to persuade me differently.
I come to this book having been educated by John Terraine and a YouTube channel ( "Lord Hardthrasher") to think that Bader was talented, astonishingly courageous and completely wrong about the "numbers game" and the support from Leigh-Mallory was equally mistaken if not politically motivated. I hope it will offer a correction or at least a counter point to consider. I was not able to find that. The tactical descriptions are exciting and arouse very proper admiration and gratitude for the fighters of the RAF and allies. But there is no discussion of the strategic position, the competing visions of the Dowding system and the reality of the way the battle needed to be fought. Was the Big Wing a good idea? We're its objectives really appropriate to the battle? Was it appropriate to add time and fuel forming up for an attack when the result was an unwieldy formation in which the attackers "queued up" and got in each others' way? I was hoping for that analysis (and also for an explanation of the chain of command which engendered the frustration so often expressed). I didn't find it.
The book was not what I hoped for. It confirmed my first conclusions and it did so without having really attempted to persuade me differently.
Displaying 1 of 1 review