Blenheim Squadrons of World War 2

What I liked about the author's Osprey contribution regarding the Shorts Sutherland was how he went out of his way to debunk lingering myths about that aircraft's service and performance, and that is also a theme with this book. This is as Lake basically views the Blenheim as overrated out of the gate, not really a major improvement over the biplane support aircraft that it replaced, and was mostly valuable as an intermediate aircraft to wean RAF pilots off old-school machines. However, the RAF did go to war in the Blenheim, and one senses a certain degree of anger from the author over the good men thrown away in ill-considered daylight missions; largely because nothing better was available. As for the greatest service of the crews of show more the Blenheim, Lake figures that would be the anti-shipping campaign against the German invasion fleet in 1940; that was a worthy sacrifice.

It should also be noted that this work concentrates on RAF and allied "free" units. Significant foreign operators such as Finland, Turkey, Romania, and Yugoslavia are not covered. show less