This lovely book - which contains many photographs as well as some colour illustrations and tactical layouts - depicts the various aircraft used for ground attack by both the Allies and the Germans during the Second World War.

The use of aircraft as ’ flying artillery ’ is not new. Fighters were used in the First World War for trench straffing, but it was during the Second World War that they became a vital fourth part of the action fought by the land arms of the artillery, armour and infantry. In Spain in 1937 the Germans first used the Ju 87 ’ Stuka ’ dive bomber and it dominated ground attack for the first three years of the Second World War. The Allies, however, learnt fast, and as the war changed they introduced their own aircraft and tactics. The Russians flew their Shturmovik armoured fighter - bombers in the ’ Circle of Death ’, while the British employed Typhoons in tactics with the innocent name of a ’ Cab Rank ’. But whatever the name or the aircraft, the effect was to paralyse movement, pulverise guns and vehicles and leave men stunned by an attack which was both sudden and devastating.