Insightful

A cracking audio book which provides a valuable insight into wartime Night Fighting. Great

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Engaging accounts of brave men

Interesting to hear the account of the air war from the German prospective. Brave men who were in reality little different from the allied airmen, doing their perceived duty to save their motherland

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Brilliant and Different - A Night Fighter

The narrator having a very upper British accent makes for an interesting choice, and in my view a clever choice. it's impossible to tell the author apart from his British pilot counterparts. Swap the aircraft model numbers and city names, you'd never know... and that's the point, and perhaps points to why the adversarial respect between pilots. Those looking for a guy supporting national socialism, or wanting a guy apologising for stuff he didn't do, speaking out against his country will be disappointed, this is a night fighter pilots memoirs, and that's all, and it's brilliant. I knew nothing at all about fighter planes at night, and it was always a mystery to me what exactly went on after sun down. I'm very glad I listened, and had no idea they already had a radar, and early versions of chaff. Having the cover of night, I very much got the impression despite losses, there were no where near as many friends lost as most other German ww2 memoirs, which makes for a much easier listen than most German ww2 memoirs, something I have struggled with in past. one of the best catalogue included audio books I've heard

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really enjoyed this book

loved this book, not really into aviation but this was a fascinating listen, glad I listened to it

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Excellent historical document

Well read, easy to understand on any level of listener and very informative.

A solid description of the evolving cat and mouse between the Luftwaffe and Bomber Command.

I highly recommend this title.

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1 person found this helpful

Brilliant authentic and well read memoir!

This is an excellent memoir from the other side - a few minor errors due no doubt to not all of the information being accessible relatively soon after the war ended when the book was written. Otherwise this is a brilliant read.

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A good view from the other side

Ive not listened to many accounts from the Luftwaffe side of the war and it is a good story of the challenges they faced.

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This is a hidden gem

This is a unicorn amongst WW2 non-fiction books.

This follows the personal story of the Luftwaffe (German airforce) in WW2 from the point the allies start bombing Germany, right to the end of the war. So it’s almost like an autobiography but focuses on life as a pilot and never really touches on his life outside of that.
The author never touches on politics or Nazi ideology and never speaks ill of the allies either. It’s a very objective combat and factual based story with segments of how he socialised with his comrades as a fellow pilot when he wasn’t fighting.
His role was specifically night fighting to protect Germany from bombers and the technical and tactical detail from his perspective each time he flights up to fight is superb. It allows you to appreciate the all aspects as if you were a Pilot,Commander,Engineer and a human, all in one. You don’t need any background knowledge but the book will smoothly run you up to speed.

Above all, you can tell he respects and empathises with the very pilots he was trying to shoot down and oozes a respectful admiration for all of them.

He also does a brilliant job of showing you the evolving mental perspective of Germans especially with morale as the years pass by.

A final bonus, is how he references German night fighting aces at various points in his story and highlights their achievements and their obituaries, by this point you would know how difficult night fighting is, and helps put a whole new perspective for the scale of their achievements

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A great book, but didn't like the narrator

I've read this book, in its printed form, many times. It is fascinating to hear the night fighter story from the other side. But I simply couldn't get on with the voice of the narrator of this audio book. Otherwise it'd have been 5 stars. I think Amazon offer it as a Kindle book, together with the Audible narration add-on, so I'd highly recommend you buy the Kindle version and, maybe, try the add-on narrative. You can always return the narration if you don't like it. The book is well worth reading.

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7 people found this helpful

Remarkable.

A fascinating and dispassionate account of an intense aspect of WW2. Good to see a German point of view and the evident mutual respect for fellow aviators.

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2 people found this helpful