Figure 1.--This the book I received for my 1940 Christmas present, my first Christmas away from home. Put your cursor on the book to peak inside.

Our parents did send gifts from time to time (birthdays and Christmas), but some were lost when the mail ships were sunk. One gift has survived. Janes Fighting Aircraft 1939. Grahm and I were delighted with it, although it was not a book written for children. The book was published in December 1939. In the very front is an addendum stating "Owing to the deletion of certain foreign advertisements the pagination of the Advertisement Section in this book is not consecutive." That meant that there were no German adverts. Interestingly there is an Italian Advert, but they weren't in the war then. The three fighters which would play a key role in the upcoming Battle of Brirain were in the book. The Hurricane and Spitfire were in the book. So was the ME-109 in the German section. It was difficult to compare the fighters with the information given. And at the time the book was published, there had not yet been intensive combat between German and British planes so the relative effectiveness of the planes had not yet been tested. One subject not addressed by the book was combat tactics. Here the Lufwaffe, despite its recent creation had developed much more effective tactics, such as flying formations and convegring fire distances. This caused considerable difficulty for the hard-pressed RAF pilots in the opening stages of the Battle of Britain.