First Blitz: The Secret German Plan to Raze London to the Ground in 1918 - Hardcover

Hanson, Neil

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385611706 ISBN 13: 9780385611701

Publisher: Doubleday, 2008

Synopsis

'Fighting was raging on the other side of the Channel, but in London, in the warmth of a drowsy late-September afternoon, the war seemed a long way away. The roads were strangely quiet and deserted, for petrol restrictions had reduced motor traffic almost to zero. London seemed breathless, in the tense expectancy of disaster. The alarm was given soon after nightfall. At Biggin Hill and a score of other airfields, pilots scrambled from their quarters and sprinted for their aircraft. Within seconds the air was full of the noise of engines, as the squadrons taxied out and took off into the ever-darkening sky'."The First Blitz" is told in two parts, each detailing the events of a single week. The first part tells the story of the first London Blitz - six raids by German bombers in eight nights in 1917. Part two focuses on the events of August 1918 and the countdown to the incendiary raids that would have destroyed much of London and Paris had they not been called off at the very last minute.

About this title

About the Author

Neil Hanson is the author of four acclaimed works of narrative history: The Custom of the Sea, The Dreadful Judgement,The Confident Hope of a Miracle. and The Unknown Soldier. He lives in Yorkshire with his family.

From the Inside Flap

If I were asked what event of the last year has been of most significance to the future of humanity, I should reply that it is not the Russian Revolution, nor even the stern intervention of the United States in a sacred cause, but the appearance of a single German aeroplane flying at high noon over London last November.
Lovat Fraser, The Times, 1917

A world away from the killing fields of France was a battle that could have changed the face of history. In the early years of the First World War, London had been subjected to sustained bombing attacks from German Zeppelins, but by late 1916 improvements in British aircraft technology had put paid to the threat they offered.

Undeterred, the German airforce took up the assault and over the course of 1917, threatened to engulf London in firestorms a portent of the London Blitz and the Battle of Britain over twenty years later. Their determination to bring London to its knees was fuelled by a growing ability to do so.

In less than four years, the Luftwaffe s England Squadron had moved from crude, canvas and wire light aircraft to four-engined giants as big as anything that flew in the Second World War. The First Blitz took place over eight nights in 1917, but it was the second wave of attacks in the summer of 1918, following the development of the Elektron incendiary bomb, that came within an ace of obliterating London. The margin between the survival of the world s greatest capital city and its total destruction came down to less than one hour.

The events and decisions taken in the course of those fateful days were as important as anything that happened on the Western Front. With breathtaking insight, compelling drama and supreme narrative clarity, Neil Hanson tells the story of the air war that could have altered the course of the conflict, and with it the history of the twentieth century itself . . .

Edition details

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0385611706
• ISBN 13: 9780385611701
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 436