Fairey Battle
Product code 9781908757562
Fairey
Series Photo Archive 40
Publisher/Brand Wingleader
Author Pavel Türk
Format a4l
No. Pages 72
Version Soft cover
Language English
Category Aviationbooks
Subcategory WW2 UK » WW2 UK Aircraft
Availability In stock
This product was added to our database on Thursday 25 September 2025.
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Also in this series:
| Product | Publisher/Brand | Series/scale | Price € | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Armstrong Whitworth Whitley in RAF Bomber and Coastal Command Service | Wingleader | Photo Archive 36 | € 21.97 | |
 | Avro Anson Mk I in Worldwide Service | Wingleader | Photo Archive 25 | € 21.97 | |
 | Consolidated Liberator GR Variants in RAF Coastal Command and RCAF Service | Wingleader | Photo Archive 30 | € 21.97 | |
 | Consolidated Liberator Part 2, | Wingleader | Photo Archive 39 | € 21.97 | |
 | Hawker Hurricane Mk I in RAF service NW Europe 1935 to the Battle of BritainTemporarily Out of Stock. | Wingleader | Photo Archive 3 | € 21.97 | |
 | Hawker Typhoon 1940 to Spring 1943 | Wingleader | Photo Archive 16 | € 21.97 | |
 | P-40 Tomahawk and Kittyhawk in RAF Service -Europe and North Africa | Wingleader | Photo Archive 24 | € 21.97 | |
 | Supermarine Spitfire Mk V | Wingleader | Photo Archive 6 | € 21.97 | |
 | Westland Lysander in Worldwide service | Wingleader | Photo Archive 32 | € 21.97 | |
 | Wingleader Photo Archive 45. Boulton Paul Defiant in Worldwide Two service | Wingleader | Photo Archive 45 | € 21.97 |
The Fairey Battle was sleek, solid and quite capable for its day, and was a step up in technology from the biplanes that it replaced. However, the Battle had always been doomed to failure due to an insane specification that effectively required an aircraft a third heavier than a Spitfire, with twice as big a wingspan, to carry 1000lbs of bombs and three crew members… but only with the same single Merlin engine as the Spitfire! Even the design team at Fairey strongly recommended a twin engined version to the Air Ministry, but to no avail.
Digging deep into the Fairey Battle’s history for this book has been a real pleasure for all the Wingleader team. We learned a lot and can now confidently spot an early K series from a later one, as hopefully you will too after reading this book. We asked RAF expert Andy Thomas to pull it all together for us as his knowledge of RAF squadrons, codes and operations during that pre to early-war period is second to none.
As always, we’ve taken the very best in Press photos from our Wingleader Archive collection and combined them with some very rare private photos that show squadron codes never seen on Battles in print before.
approx 120 photos and 6 colour profiles
