Messerschmitt Me 262 Schwalbe (and so much more)
Messerschmitt Me 262 Schwalbe, German Army Press, 1998, ISBN 9781535184113, 309 pp.
The book’s title is only the beginning…this book encompasses Germany’s military aviation efforts from its beginning through the Cold War. There is a well worth reading chapter on the Messerschmitt Me 262 Schwalbe, as expected from the title alone. However, there is so much more than the parsimonious title indicates, beginning with a chapter essay on Nazi Germany’s Luftwaffe evolution. Other chapters appear to be firsthand accounts written by interceptor pilots as well as night fighter pilots. These are intriguing for their description of the mind set of various Luftwaffe pilots of the day. This writing puts a face and personality onto former adversaries. Additional chapters detail various air-to-air weapons employed by the Luftwaffe during World War II, as well as being tested or on the drawing board. These chapters, too, appear to be first person accounts from staff either on these projects or the actual use the weapons.
Arado’s Ar 234 Blitz is gone into in some detail as well as the British night fighter counter measure, H2S. Theory as well as application are both page turning to read as is the entire book. Many pertinent photos are reproduced in half-tones through they are quite well presented and captioned.
The bibliography is thorough as are the footnotes. The glossary and index are more than helpful, as well. Although the material seems to be spot-on there is the matter of authorship. Gustavo Urueña A may be the sole author or he may be the chief editor. I could not find contact information or a bio of him to answer these questions. Contacting the email address printed in the book for the publisher and the distributor also proved to be a dry hole. Gustavo Urueña A does have several Word War II related books for sale, however.
Messerschmitt Me 262 Schwalbe belongs on the bookshelves of historians as well as history fans for its insights, hard to find technical information and the human dimension which threads throughout this book.
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