No Place For Beginners

The Air Battle of Malta has been the topic of countless books since the end of World War Two and has always been a subject of great interest to the author who has produced a detailed narrative, primarily from the Allies perspective, of Malta's aerial defense (and offense) from June 1940 to September 1941. This volume deals with the early years of the siege imposed upon Malta when small numbers of RAF Sea Gladiators and Hurricanes, occasionally accompanied by a handful of Fleet Air Arm Fulmars, blunted Axis aerial attacks against the islands at a time when an embryonic Malta-based strike force began to emerge that would develop to become the scourge of Axis supply convoys across the Mediterranean. An additional aspect of the author's approach to this book is his fresh examination of the camouflage schemes worn by the combatant aircraft involved in this battle, particularly those employed by the British. Using evidence garnered from a number of sources, including interviews and correspondence with veterans and by reinterpretation of selected photographs, reappraisals of the colors worn by many of the aircraft are considered.