When the first edition of Volume 1 was published twenty years ago, it hit the WW II interested community as a bomb. Richard Goldblatt at SimHqCom, called it without a doubt one of the finest aviation history books Ive ever read, and J.J. Fedorowicz called it an indispensable reference highly recommended. At Stone & Stone it was voted as the No. 1 military history book of the year. That edition was sold out in about a year, and since no new edition was published, it has become a rarity. The first edition contained a maximum of 100,000 words. The second edition not only has much higher quality as far as the research is concerned but also contains twice that word count, a very large number of absolutely new photos (many of which are from pilot veterans photo albums and have never been published before), printed in the same high quality as in Volumes 4 and 5.