World War II Database

Full Title: Fighting Hitler's Jets: The Extraordinary Story of the American Airmen Who Beat the Luftwaffe and Defeated Nazi Germany

Me 262, He 162, and Ba 349 were only a few of the Wunderwaffen ("Wonder Weapons") that arrived too late and in too small a quantity to change the tide of war in favor of Germany. In Fighting Hitler's Jets, veteran military history author Robert Dorr focuses on the development of jet and rocket propelled aircraft and the Allied experience fighting against them.

The book itself was very rich in content, covering not only the combat action against them, which the title of the book offered, but also a wide range of topics such as the history of the German engineers behind the weapons, narratives of pilots of both sides, the Allied and Soviet scramble to secure blueprints and actual machines, and the German designs' impact on the next generation of American and Soviet jets. In terms of writing style, Dorr chose a very informal style in which it felt like he was having a living room conversation with me; I found some of the early chapters to be eclectic and not easy to follow as a result, although this was something that I got used to fairly quickly. Finally, many of the photographs included in the center portion of the book were directly from his personal collection, thus rarely seen previously.

I was introduced to Dorr's writing several years ago with Hell Hawks!. Although I felt that Fighting Hitler's Jets was not on par with the earlier work, I still found myself enjoying the book and learning a great deal.

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