Upcoming book: Breaking Rommel: The Struggle For Air Supremacy Over El Alamein July 1942

[Orwell1984]

See here:http://ww2talk.com/index.php?threads...oogle_vignette
for details.

[Adriano Baumgartner]

Amazing...simply amazing. On the wish lilst for Xmas

[laurent14]

Very, very interested too.
It looks like a piece of deep research and so, worth of every penny

[Andrew Arthy]

Those are three excellent researchers, so this should be a fantastic book.

Cheers,
Andrew A.

[Jim Oxley]

I have Palermo's wonderful "Eagles Over Gazala".

If this book is as good as that, it'll be a keeper for sure!

[Edward]

Breaking Rommel: The Struggle For Air Supremacy Over El Alamein July 1942
(IBN Editore, Rome - forthcoming 2026)
by Michele Palermo, Marco de Poli and Andreas Biermann
c. 490 pages w/ 100 b&w photos, 20 maps, 25 tables, 8 figures and "colour plates" (profiles?) - softcover

"July 1942 saw the end of the Axis advance into Egypt. A heroic effort by a beaten but not defeated Eighth Army, supported by the Royal Air Force, first stalled and then forced Panzerarmee Afrika onto the defensive, just short of Alexandria. The to-and-fro on the ground was mirrored in the air, with both sides seeking but failing to realise a strategy advantage that would deliver superiority over the battlefield, every day seeing hundreds of sorties in this struggle. In the end, just like the ground battle, it was a costly stalemate. Over 200 planes were shot down in air combat during the month, in addition to those lost to accidents and anti-aircraft guns, and numerous air crew were killed. This book describes this air battle and serves as a memory to all airmen and ground personnel who fought and in particular those who died in it."

Fighter Battles
Our focus is very much on the fighter battles, but we are also giving detailed treatment to the strategic night-bombing campaign on both sides, as well as to the air battle over the Tobruk-Matruh convoys. The air campaign is put clearly into the frame of the ground battles, as the two were inextricably linked. For example, for every day we have a detailed table of Axis strikes, tracking their real impact on the Allied ground forces, as much as is possible, by carefully linking to strike times to Allied unit war diary entries.

The book is written on a linear, daily structure, with each day covering the same items:
1. Ground battle summary
2. SAS raid (when they happened)
3. Allied air summary
4. Axis air summary
5. Axis strike table
6. Operations Day
7. Anti-Shipping Operations (when they happened)
8. Operations Night
9. Other events
10. Table of sorties and losses for the day

"There is also a host of technical detail on the planes involved, in dedicated chapters, detailed statistics on claims and losses, a tabular overview of airplane availability and servicability and of course a large number of first-person testimonials from the fighter pilot reports on the engagements that they wrote up on their return from a sortie. There are also chapters discussing intelligence and logistics, as well as the run-up to the first battle of El Alamein."

"A word of thanks - We first off wanted to thank all our collaborators and the people who supported this project. Historical research of this nature is now a transcontinental endeavour. Without our friends in New Zealand, South Africa and across Europe and North America this book would not have been possible. There are too many people to name, you know who you are!" - Andreas


Also by Michele Palermo
Eagles Over Gazala: Air Battles in North Africa May - June 1942
(IBN Editore, Napoleone - 2014)
299 pages - softcover