Introduction

This book covering The Berlin Airlift the World's Largest ever Air Supply Operation is part of a series of titles from Pen and Sword as part of their ‘Images of Aviation’ series. These books cover the subject matter mostly in photographs and so offer a great visual reference for anyone interested in the subject matter regardless of the reason for that interest. For the modeller these books represent a cornucopia when it comes to visual information.

Review

This offering from Pen and Sword is part of the ‘Images of Aviation’ series. This series of books are soft backed offerings having a good card cover with a very good spine to the book that keeps the contents in good order. This book covering The Berlin Airlift the World's Largest ever Air Supply Operation has been authored by John Grehan who has written more than 150 books and articles on military subjects, covering most periods of history. John Grehan is currently employed as the Assistant Editor of Britain at War Magazine.. The contents of this title are provided over 184 pages of good quality semi gloss paper. The contents are presented in the following sections:

Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Chapter 1 The Curtain of Iron
Chapter 2 The Airlift Begins
Chapter 3 Practicalities
Chapter 4 Inside Berlin
Chapter 5 Sustained Effort
Chapter 6 Winter
Chapter 7 The Easter Parade
Chapter 8 Victory
Chapter 9 Never Forgotten
References and Notes
Further Reading

The text in this book is far more than I expected and a very informative read it is. The Berlin Airlift is something I knew of not about and this book fills in a lot of holes in my knowledge. I had not realised how close to conflict things became both before and during the airlift: A Yak fighter crashing into a transport aircraft nearly resulted in RAF fighters doing escort duties just like the USAAF had done during World War 2.

The text skips along at a fair pace and so a subject that could be considered dull by some becomes interesting due to that pace and the story it tells; I can see why John Grehan has been such a successful author as he has the ability to make a subject interesting and drawing you along with the text, quite a feat when reading about what is essentially history.

The black and white photographs are of a good size and plentiful in this offering, and so if it is purely visual reference you are looking for there is plenty of that here. The photographs are further lifted by exceptional stand alone comments or interwoven in the text; an approach I approve of for getting a viewer to read the content as well.

Conclusion

This offering from Pen and Sword as part of their Images of Aviation series is an exceptional book that really drew me into the subject matter; it filled in many holes in my knowledge of the events that occurred during the dark days after World War 2 as the Cold War really got started. The writing style of John Grehan is a first for me from a history standpoint as he has taken a subject and written about it in a way that made me want to read more, a very special skill.