Book Review: 'Big Week: The Biggest Air Battle of World War II'
The cover for the British edition of Big Week. © 2018 Penguin Books (UK) and Atlantic Monthly Press (a Penguin subsidiary) On November 6, 2018, the Atlantic Monthly Press, an imprint of Britain's Penguin publishing empire, released the U.S. edition of Big Week: The Biggest Air Battle of World War II. Its British counterpart, Big Week: The Biggest Air Battle of World War Two, had been published almost three months earlier (on August 6) and was a best-seller in Great Britain. Written by historian and BBC TV presenter James Holland, the 400-page book tells the story of the Anglo-American air forces' struggle to achieve air supremacy over Western Europe as a necessary pre-requisite for Operation Overlord, the planned Allied cross-Channel invasion of German-occupied France, which was scheduled to take place in May of 1944. As the book's title implies, Big Week focuses on Operation Argument, a series of air strikes by American and British bombers against Naz...