Summer, 1940: The Battle of Britain [Hardcover]

Roger Parkinson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1977

Summer, 1940: The Battle Of Britain by Parkinson, Roger

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: David McKay Co; 1st edition (November 1977)
• ISBN-10: 0679507566
• ISBN-13: 978-0679507567
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,909,779 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Could Hitleer have won?, September 24, 2002

By 

B. Falk "eoi" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Summer, 1940: The Battle of Britain (Hardcover)

Could Hitler have conquered Britain in 1940? How close was that country to sharing the fate of Occupied Europe?

The common belief is that Hitler's failure to invade Great Britain in 1940 is inexplicable, and that the Battle of Britain was narrowly won, against overwhelming odds, by a very few British pilots.

In Summer, 1940, Roger Parkinson, a leading military historian, has drawn on extensive contemporary accounts and on hitherto unpublished documentation, up to the War Cabinet level, for a new view of these controversial events of World War II, in a telling and atmospheric recreation of those four tense months of 1940.
Other elements of special interest in Summer, 1940: Parkinson's account of the decision-making processes of the British and German High Commands; his descriptions of the actual battles for air supremacy; and new information on the air tactics of the Royal Air Force and the Luftwaffe.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars old new look?, January 22, 2011

By 

Alexander T. Gafford "alex" (Midland, Ga United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Summer, 1940: The Battle of Britain (Hardcover)

In 1977 Roger Parkinson wrote this relatively short but succinct book to put examine closely the RAF loss rate of pilots and aircraft in the Battle of Britain. By then, he had access to all the neccessary documentation to determine what state the RAF was in each day of the battle. His narrative starts at Dunkirk and ends on Sep 15th and simply follows the fighting day by day systematically using frequent quotations from the survivors to make clear the human side of the conflict. But ultimately Parkinson looks at the number of losses sustained by each side.

His conclusion was that British replacment of aircraft and pilots was sufficient to maintain the RAF in a position of constant strength relative to the Luftwaffe throughout the late summer and early fall of 1940, essentially no matter what the Luftwaffe, given its size and capability, did. He drew the conclusion that Goering essentially had no chance of successfully controlling the air over southern England as long as the RAF made no major mistakes. He makes this conclusion knowing full well that at the time it seemed a very close run thing, especially at the top leadership level in Britain.

An addtional picture gained by this book is the indecision and lack of committment shown by Hitler. Parkinson argues that the air assault on Great Britain was essentially launched because Hitler couldn't figure out what else to do and used the Luftwaffe because it was there. He paints a picture that neither Hitler nor the Kreigsmarine had any real faith in Sea Lion.

There has been considerably more work done on the Battle of Britain since 1977 with many works considering the Park vs Leigh-Mallory controversy, Goering's command style, German changes in tactics and so on. If you believe Parkinson's thesis you would come to the conclusion that most of this work is beside the point though perhaps interesting enough.

On the face of it, this argument is persuasive but I am not sure how this argument has been handled from a historiographic point of view.

If you have read a lot about this the Battle of Britain, but not this book, then go ahead and read it and see how it seems to you. If you have not read much about the Battle of Britain this is a good enough book to start on as its brevity makes it a pretty quick but quite informative read. The maps are tucked in the back and are good enough. There is some photographic illustration but nothing to write home about.