The RAF's French foreign legion; De Gaulle, the British and the re-emergence of French airpower 1940-45.

9781441189783

The RAF's French foreign legion; De Gaulle, the British and the re-emergence of French airpower 1940-45.

Bennett, G.H.

Continuum Publishing Group

2011

275 pages

$120.00

Hardcover

Continuum studies in military history

D761

Happening across film footage of a young French airman working with the British Royal Air Force at an airfield in Cornwall in the midst of the air war with Nazi Germany, the author came to discover the existence of scores of young Frenchmen of the Free French movement (the one specifically associated with Charles De Gaulle, as opposed to the more general moniker that is sometimes applied to many anti-Nazi French) who came to fly and fight with the RAF during World War II, along with a number of other nationalities that came to constitute the RAF's "foreign legion." In this work, he reconstructs the history of the Free French Air Pilots, focusing beyond just pure military matters on such issues as the influence of the politics of the Free French movement on the choices and activities of these pilots and their role in reconstituting the French Air Force in the final stages of the war.

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