[John Manrho]

A little bit more thought on the available books....

I still believe the book written by Ron Pütz and myself in 2004 is the standard for the operation. If you use it with the last Errata sheet No. 8 then I think you have practically the latest status on the facts. The last 20 years I have not seen anything real new factual information on the raid or any new factual analysis.

Concerning the older books mentioned by Leon Venter in one of the posts above;

(1980) Operation Bodenplatte, Lawrence Cortesi: Full of bullshit and you can through it in the waste bin.
(1989) Start im Morgengrauen, Werner Girbig, with 90 pages on Bodenplatte: At that time pretty good on the German side allthough with some mistakes. Quite some first hand accounts from German side. (Note: Actually the very first edition was from early seventies)
(1998) Destruction at Dawn, Arthur Bishop: Very poor on German side and with numerous mistakes and also pure BS.
(1994) To Win the Winter Sky, Danny Parker: Good on Allied side, nothing really new on German side accept by using ADI(K) Reports as "first hand accounts".
(1994) Battle of the Airfields, Norman Franks, revised edition of 1982. Pretty OK, but not really much new on German side.

Of course you can add the different unit history's by Prien (JG 1/11, JG 3, JG 27, JG 53, JG 77), Mombeek (JG 2, JG 4), Caldwell (JG 26), Horn (KG 51, KG 76) to get more detailed accounts on the German side.

However, in my opinion there is nothing that gives a better factual total overview than "Bodenplatte, The Luftwaffe's Last Hope"...

If you want to go to the "what if"- department, then you can have fun at this forum or other fora....

Regards,
John