Battleaxe to Lightfoot: The evolution of tactical air power in North Africa

Battleaxe to Lightfoot: The evolution of tactical air power in North Africa
With Mike Bechthold
Part of a series of shows to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the battle of El Alamein on WW2TV
• El Alamein - 80th Anni...
More Canadian content on WW2TV
• Canada in WWII
The British Army and Royal Air Force entered the war with conflicting views on the issue of air support that hindered the success of early operations. It was only after the chastening failure of Operation Battleaxe in June 1941, fought according to army doctrine, that Winston Churchill shifted strategy on the direction of future air campaigns - ultimately endorsing the RAF's view of mission and target selection. This view adopted principles of air-ground cooperation that Canadian-born flying ace Raymond Collishaw (1893-1976) had demonstrated in combat. As part of our look at El Alamein, Mike Bechthold will trace the emergence of this strategy in the RAF air campaign in Operation Compass, the first British offensive in the Western Desert. There, Air Commodore Collishaw's small force overwhelmed its Italian counterpart and disrupted enemy logistics. He will then conclude by discussing air support in Operation Lightfoot - The Second Battle of El Alamein.
Mike Bechthold holds a PhD in History from the University of New South Wales, Canberra, Australia and an MA & Honours BA from Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Mike is the author or editor of numerous books and articles. His most recent book is Flying to Victory: Raymond Collishaw and the Western Desert Campaign (University of Oklahoma Press, 2017) and he is the co-author of a series of guidebooks about the Canadian battlefields of the Second World. He specializes in the fields of military air power (especially tactical air operations in the First and Second World Wars), the Canadian army in Normandy and Northwest Europe, and the Canadian Corps in the Great War. For 22 years Mike worked as the Communications Director of the Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies and the Managing Editor of Canadian Military History, an academic quarterly journal. Mike is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a Fellow of the Gregg Centre for the Study of War and Society at the University of New Brunswick, and an Associate Air Force Historian. He recently served as the Executive Director of the Juno Beach Centre Association. mikebechthold....
Flying to Victory: Raymond Collishaw and the Western Desert Campaign, 1940-1941 by Mike Bechthold
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A previous WW2TV show with historian Ken Delve
The Desert Air Force • The Desert Air Force
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