Introduction

The first flight of the Douglas DC3 was on the 18th December 1935, little did the manufacturers know how versatile this aircraft was to become, not just as a commercial airliner but also as a military transport. At the end of its production there were a total of 10,926 planes had been built. The most notable airborne operation that this plane took part in was Operation Overlord - the invasion of Normandy by the Allied Forces on D-Day.

Review

This hard back book written by Martin W Bowman (Air War D-Day/Air War Market Garden Series), is published by Pen and Sword Aviation and is priced at £25.00, contains 335 pages with two glossy sections of black and white photographs. This work not only contains personal accounts of those who took part, but also contains historical notes.

The list of contents is as follows:
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1 - ‘Devils in Baggy Pants’
Chapter 2 - The Pie-eyed Piper of Barnes
Chapter 3 - ‘We’re Goin’ Over; Over There’
Chapter 4 - ‘Rendezvous With Destiny’
Chapter 5 - ‘Albany’ - ‘Stand Up and Hook Up’
Chapter 6 - ‘Albany’ - The Fifth and Sixth Serials
Chapter 7 - ‘Albany’ - The Last Serials
Chapter 8 - ‘Boston’ Begins
Chapter 9 - ‘Boston’ - The Second and Last Serials
Chapter 10 - ‘Tonga’, ‘Mallard’ and ‘Rob Roy’
Chapter 11 - ‘Chicago’
Chapter 12 - ‘Detroit’
Chapter 13 - ‘Freeport’ and ‘Memphis’
Chapter 14 - ‘Elmira’ and ‘Keokuk’
Chapter 15 - ‘Galveston’ and ‘Hackensack’
Epilogue
Index

This work is a mixture of historical archive accounts, and personal reflections of those who took part in this battle. Here is a small section taken from Gale R Ammerman who wrote - The really large and heavy Horsa gliders put a strain of the C-47s… Over the coast of Normandy at 400 to 500 feet… Tracer bullets arched up toward the aircraft, curved and fell away. We were soldiers enough to know that between each tracer there were five or six equally lethal bullets. It was a sight that caused one’s balls to retreat up into the body cavity and the sphincter muscles to cut grommets out of the seats.

Conclusion

This book is an informative piece, with many personal accounts of events as they happened before and during the D-Day operation. There is a section in the book that covers events at Greenham Common, I was fascinated because to me Greenham Common was where many women later camped and protested because of the nuclear missiles that were stationed there. If you like the other books written by Martin Bowman then this is definitely a book for your collection.