Shlomo AloniBesprekingen

My initial response to this series when Osprey introduced it was to wonder if it was really necessary, considering all the other series that the firm publishes. However, "Air Campaign" has developed into something quite impressive and this is one of the better booklets to come out, as it really advanced my knowledge of the Israeli side of the opening of the Six Day War. As for the Arab experience, we may well never know just what was going on, particularly from a personal perspective.

Read this as a companion to the freelance research I was doing for a upcoming board game. This is why it took me so long to read the entire thing.

The particular virtue of this book is that it gives you about the best available blow-by-blow accounting of the aerial aspects of the first Arab-Israeli war. In fact it's a rather wider study then that, as the authors also provide an overview of military aviation in the Middle East during World War II, such as coverage of the British defense of Iraq and the conquest of the French Levant. Most enjoyable are the stories about the improvised war of the first few weeks after Israeli independence was declared. This is not to mention that the British presence as observers, and occasional participants in the combat, is also discussed. If there is any particular problem it's that enough time has elapsed to render some of the book's perspectives a little dated, particularly in regards to the wider context of the Arab-Israeli conflict.½