Customer Reviews

Junkers Ju 88 Kampfgeschwader in North Africa and the Mediterranean (Combat Aircraft)

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John Weal summarizes the combat record of the Junkers 88 over the Med and North Africa in this Osprey 'Combat Aircraft' volume, #75 in the series. First committed to action in late 1941, the Schnellbomber would score many successes; pounding Malta almost to submission, savaging Allied convoys and lending support to the Africa Korps. As recounted in Weal's book, during its glory days over the Med, the Ju 88 was an adversary to be feared.

Several units featured prominently in Med/North Africa ops, specifically LG 1, KG 54 and KG 77. Weal interweaves each wing's combat career together as the Luftwaffe fed more and more Ju 88 units into the theater to aid in the effort to bomb Malta into submission, assist German forces in Greece, Yugoslavia, North Africa, etc., stop Allied reinforcement convoys and so on. Despite some spectacular successes, such as the devastating raids on Piraeus and Bari, by summer 1944, Ju 88 units had been been chased from the Med.

Although Weal only has 72 pages to cover three years of action spread across a wide geographic area, he provided an informative overview of Ju 88 ops. The strategical and tactical missions flown by Ju 88 units and the contributions those missions made to German victories are nicely detailed.

Over 90 photographs are included along with 10 pages of color profiles that show the varied - and sometimes striking - camouflage schemes worn by Ju 88 units.

As a comprehensive, nicely-illustrated and inexpensive summary of Junkers 88 combats in the Mediterranean, Weal's book is hard to beat. One thing I've always wondered though. The cover blurb on Weal mentions his "huge archive" of original German-language WWII literature which includes "individual combat reports." Given that material, how come he never uses such reports to liven up his text with some first-person reminiscences? Recommended.

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NB. Great cover artwork by Wiek Luijken! I hope Osprey continues to use him; he's good.