Today the Battle of Britain has become an indelible part of the British historical identity, one with which nearly every Briton is familiar on some level. In the process, however, the air battles between the British and the Germans often obscure the fact that the air campaign was hardly unprecedented even in British history. For during the last two years of the war, the German Luftstreitkräfte launched a bombing campaign of London and the Home Counties, one which Raymond Fredette argues was a forerunner for the more famous sequel nearly a quarter of a century later.

To demonstrate this, Fredette charts both the development of the German’s air campaign and the British response to it. As he describes it, the German campaign was a product of evolving technology, namely the improvement in German aircraft design. With British air defense forces increasingly successful in their efforts to shoot down the zeppelins used in Germany’s initial bombing campaign, the Germans turned to large biplane bombers as a means to strike their enemy across the channel. Though the flights were generally small and the damage they inflicted had a negligible impact on Britain militarily, they elicited a response out of all proportion to their effect. Numerous guns and fighters were diverted from other missions to provide for the defense of London, which proved a considerable challenge as the bombers proved to be much more difficult targets to locate (let alone shoot down) than the ponderous zeppelins. Yet it was the weather and the turn of the larger war against the Germans that doomed the campaign, as by the summer of 1918 the bombers were diverted to support the doomed offensive on the Western Front, having nevertheless established a precedent that would be followed by others.

Though Fredette draws primarily from contemporary news reports and other published accounts for his information, he uses this information to good effect. As a career air force officer he infuses his narrative with a professional’s understanding of the challenges the pilots and their superiors faced in both mounting and responding to the bombing campaign. Written with a sense of the dramatic, his book provides an engaging narrative of the “first battle of Britain,” one that makes a good case for its underappreciated significance to the history of strategic air warfare. ( )

The First Heavy Bomber Raids on England May-June 1917 dictated the bombing strategy of the RAF in WW2. A fascinating examination of the strategies and uses of air power in the First World War, Sky on Fire covers not only developments in military hardware and tactics but also how public policy and political considerations shaped the ways air power was deployed. Providing an excellent balance of data and statistics as well as human insights, Fredette’s book is essential reading for readers interested in the air power, both historically and in contemporary conflicts.
"Simply put, this is one of the finest historical accounts I have ever read on the events of the First World War. Fredette does a splendid job recreating the German aerial onslaught against England beginning in the Spring of 1917. . . . The Sky on Fire not only provides a riveting account of the bombing flights, it also probes deeply into the political and psychological impact the raids had on both sides of the channel. It is interesting to note just how seriously the British Government considered frightening and engraving the British populace. What truly makes this book intriguing however is the human element. While Fredette masters the art of statistical completing, he flavors the entire work with personl accounts of air combat. . . . [This] is a book you may have a difficult time putting down." —Aerodrome

The Book is dedicated to "Gale" Guido by Col Fredette. Gail helped him with his research at the Archives in Washington or Montgomery.

Over 40 years on and this remains the best book on the subject, not that it is faultless.
Its sometimes scattered chronology can make following events difficult. Which may have tripped up the author himself on at least one occasion regarding when the first heavy, 300kg, bombs were dropped.
One of its strengths is a clear discussion, over several disparate chapters, of the origins of the RAF and the critical role played by the Gothas in its creation.
Benefitting from personal accounts by several German airmen this book provides a readable and informative account of the German air raids on London in WW1. ( )