Yugoslavia and Greece 1940–41: The Axis' aerial assault in the Balkans (Air Campaign #48)

By: Pier Paolo Battistelli and Basilio Martino

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Synopsis: A new illustrated history of the German and Italian air campaigns in the invasions of Greece and Yugoslavia, the last full-scale Axis air offensives before Operation Barbarossa. The Greece campaign was launched by Italy in October 1940, the first large-scale campaign of the Italian Air Force outside North Africa, and its last major solo effort. With the German involvement in April 1941, and with the invasion of Yugoslavia, the Balkans saw the last large-scale Axis air campaign in Europe before the invasion of the USSR. It was also the campaign that saw expeditionary units of the RAF fighting alongside the Greeks – most famously, the handful of Hurricanes that fought to the end from makeshift olive-grove airfields, among them the Hurricane ace and future novelist Roald Dahl. In this book, renowned historian Pier Paolo Battistelli and air power expert Basilio di Martino explain how this unique campaign was fought. They highlight elements such as the Italians' development of air-to-ground support while carrying out, for the first and only time, an airborne operation, and how the Germans refined their tactics from the 1940 campaign in the West, while now also playing a major anti-shipping role. Illustrated throughout with rare photos, superb original paintings, maps and 3D diagrams, this is an expert account of the air war over the eastern Mediterranean.