Mushroom Model Publications has sent us this publication of eighty pages, called "An Ordinary Day in 1945." This B5 soft cover format book describes the action on the western aerial front on the 2nd March 1945.

By this time in the war the Luftwaffe was nearly out of aircraft and fuel and more importantly men, while the allies were getting stronger still by the day, their training , equipment and esprit de corps were all at their highest levels. This was an eventful day to capture, and a good day to choose, as it was one of the last real days the Luftwaffe sent up so many numbers against the allied juggernaut of aircraft which roamed over Germany and Europe at will by this stage of the war.

The editors here must be commended for putting so much into a book and gathering information from the most interesting missions together into one concise tome. They looked in memoirs, unit histories and even the internet to find out the information for this book. kudos to them and the Author for bringing it all together in a neat little, easy to read book.

The book starts off with the British 2nd T.A.F's accounts of its actions against the Luftwaffe and more specifically the German jets like the Blitz in the early morning encounters. The chapters after that describe the actions of the 8th Air force and their three task forces that they sent out along with fighter escorts and how they fared. The book also describes the action of the 9th air force on that day, detailed accounts from the bomber and fighter pilots are again quite frank and a little chilling in their directness. This for me was a great thing as it pulls no punches in its telling of the story.

The best part of the book is the pilot's accounts. Their stories are told from the perspective of the USAAF 8th & 9th Air Forces, and the RAF's 2nd TAF and the Luftwaffe, with gripping, and I do mean this – accounts of the actions they fought in that day. The pilots accounts were the very best part of this book. I found myself almost in disbelief at some of the stories. The bomber gunner whose plane was destroyed and he escaped from the tail section, the Mustang Pilot who escaped a 300mph explosion and fall into power lines after his aircraft exploded, the USAAF bomber crew who after being held up by switching a plane conducted a bombing run with a bunch of Lancasters. Only to find out when they got back to base their substitute plane had USAAF/RAF as its nose art!

You almost feel sorry for the pilots of the Luftwaffe when you read some of these accounts, the book certainly shows how at that late part of the war – it was an all but spent force on the western front.

The only points of this book I would change are the facts that there is no account of naval battles and also no account of any other but the Western Europe theatre of operations told. I would have loved to have compared it to what was happening on the Eastern front and to have seen the contrast in actions there at the same time. This though would have made the book a lot bigger (maybe too big ?) and not so focussed. The layout is good but I would have preferred the profiles in the middle and the footnotes to be included in the text.

There is as well a great annex at the end that goes through all of the victories and losses in this book – very interesting to see this as a footnote to the text in the book , a valuable reference for any history buffs.

There are as well as the excellent black and white photographs some very nice profiles in the back of the book of some of the aircraft that took to the air that day. Further connecting you to the story. Here are some of the images.

So what do we think?

A great read and an interesting concept, a few minor quibbles from me shouldn’t dissuade you into getting it.

Gripping accounts and great pictures tie you to the story – well done

Overall 8.5/10

Adam Norenberg