Opinions Peter J.C. Smith's V-1/He 111 book?

[Marcel van Heijkop]

The following book certainly slipped through my nets:

"Air-Launched Doodlebugs: Hitler's V 1 Missiles and 111/Kampfgeschwader 3 and 53" by Peter J. C. Smith (see: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Air-Launched.../dp/1844154017 )

Opinions/reviews anyone? Is there a lot of new material, such as photos and personal accounts? Worth having?

Thanks in advance,

Marcel

[Jukka Juutinen]

I haven´t seen this book but generally Peter C. Smith is a first class author.

Addendum: seems that this is another Peter C. Smith so I recall my comments.

[Peter D Evans]

Hi Marcel...

I have the book in question and although I cannot compare it with another other books on this subject, I found it an interesting enough read. It covers development of the V-1 and its integration into service with KG3 and KG53. It then goes on to cover daily operations from September 1944 thru to March 1945 and finishes with detailed appendices.

One word or warning, the quality of some of the photos included are poor, but I put this down to the printers rather than down to the images themselves.

BTW, if you shop around, you can find quite considerable savings on the £19.99 RRP and cheaper than Amazon too...

Cheers

Peter D Evans
LEMB Administrator

[Marcel van Heijkop]

Gents,

Thanks for your input, just the excuse I needed

Another one for the pile then!

Regard,

Marcel

[Nick Beale]

Just to add that AFAIK it's not the Peter Smith of dive bomber books fame. I have a booklet by Peter J.C. Smith that I picked up on a visit to Manchester which is about the V-1s air-launched against that city.

This was in the local history section of a bookshop there.

[Chris Goss]

This chap is a local (Manchester I think) author and from the German side, quite weak and in places inaccurate. From on the ground, it is god

[Marcel van Heijkop]

Besides the name of the author, there's more room for confusion as there are 2 different book titles for the same ISBN: From the web it appears that you can either have "Air Launched Doodlebugs: The forgotten campaign" with 243 pages or "Air Launched Doodlebugs: Hitler's V 1 missiles and III/Kampfgeschwader 3 and 53" with 224 pages. Both books were published in 2006 by Pen and Sword apparently. No idea if there are any differences between the 2 titles regarding the content let alone the reason for 2 books at the same time....

Originally Posted by Chris Goss

This chap is a local (Manchester I think) author and from the German side, quite weak and in places inaccurate. From on the ground, it is god

Chris, you're right: Besides the V-1 book, the author has written 2 other books on the air war: "Flying bombs over the Pennines" and "Luftwaffe over Manchester: The Blitz Years 1940-1944".

As I./KG66 was also involved in this campaign (marking the launch points for the V-1's over the North Sea) I'm still interested to see what the book has to offer (or not...).

Regards,

Marcel