Customer Reviews

Nachtjager, Volume One: Luftwaffe Night Fighter Units 1939-1943 (Luftwaffe Colours)

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David Williams, who wrote the HUNTERS OF THE REICH books, examines the development and early combat history of the Luftwaffe's nightfighter arm in this nicely-done volume, the first of two.

Despite Hermann Goering's idiotic boast that no enemy bomb would fall on Germany, Luftwaffe commanders began forming small nightfighter units begining in late 1939. Due to an insightful report filed by a Bf 110 pilot, Htm. Wolfgang Falck, in April 1940, the Luftwaffe began serious efforts to create and organize a Night Fighter Force, Falck being appointed to command the first Nachtjagdgeschwader. The task was enormous but Falck's efforts were bolstered by the appointment of Oberst Josef Kammhuber to command a newly created Night Fighter Division. By the end of 1940 radar technology, both ground-based and mounted in Bf 110s, Ju 88s and other aircraft, had been incorporated, resulting in a force that began taking an increasing toll of their RAF opponents.

Williams covers the first, faltering steps of German's nightfighters, chronicling their successes, failures and technical developments such as 'Schrage musik' along with giving proper credit - in the form of lengthy sidebars - to Falck, Kammhuber and top-scoring ace Helmut Lent. Several combat reports by aircrew and CGI controllers are included as well.

In typical "Classic Colours" style the text is complimented by over 200 black & white and color photos and 14 Tim Brown/Tom Tullis color profiles of Bf 109, 110, Ju 88, Do 215/217 and even Arado 68 nightfighters. This is one VERY well-illustrated book!

The exploits of experten like Streib, Gildner, Lent and Geiger live again in Williams' splendid book. Luftwaffe fans will enjoy this book; it's a winner!

This is a well written though brief historical overview of the early years of the German nightfighter force in WW2. For its compact (less than 100 9" x 12" pages) size, there are lots of great pictures, color illustrations, biographies, anectdotal accounts, and techical descriptions of the men and equipment that comprised the Nachtjagd. My only complaint is that the number of these sidebars which sometimes are as large as three pages, interrupt the reading of the historical narrative which is actually the most interesting part of the book. One of the primary purposes of this series seems to be to clarify and illustrate the color, camouflage and markings of the aircrafts used by the Luftwaffe. To that end I would like to see more than just profiles of the aircraft which are illustrated. There also seem to be a few tiny errors in the identification of aircraft, but overall I am very happy with this book and would highly recomend it to anyone, especially scale modelers.

Same review as with vol. 2 goes with this book. Generaly ok, hard to read but good drawings. Could use less on people and more on machines.

This series of books is worth the money. They provide a gripping narrative of the history of the fighting units.

As well as this there are extensive pictures and excellent colour line drawings of some of the aircraft used.

This is one book to get!!!