So happy to see the release date got updated again—now it’s 06/03/2026! No rush at all, I’ll be here waiting and super excited for your new work!
March 2026 was the completion date I gave the publisher. So I was a little surprised to see it set at September 2026!
I was reviewing the work I've done to date yesterday (you'll be aware that I've been working on this book, on and off, for about six years now - so progress has been in increments, rather than one continuous drive towards the finishing line) and I was surprised by how different the story of Germany's medium and heavy bombers actually is, compared to what's been written so far by previous authors.
The hardest bit - the bit that's really been the greatest stumbling block - is the setup and main narrative. When the Luftwaffe was formally launched in 1935, what sort of shape did its leaders want it to take over the next few years - what was it supposed to look like when brought up to full strength? It's clear that the Luftwaffe was meant to be a bomber force above anything else, with level bombers being the overriding primary focus - not dive-bombers. And it stayed that way for years. Dive-bombers were important, but it was a niche role and planned production numbers for the Ju 87 compared to, say, the He 111 reflect that.
So when did the focus abruptly switch to dive-bombers, i.e. ordering that the Ju 88 had to be able to dive, and even the He 177, when both were designed as level bombers - and why (Udet undeniably championed the dive-bomber, but the evidence shows he definitely did not agree with the notion that 'everything should be a dive bomber')? And when the focus had switched to dive-bombers, what happened to all the plans laid for level bombers and how long was it before the focus switched back to level bombers? And once the development focus was back on level bombers, what sort of bomber did the Luftwaffe actually want? High-altitude bombers? High-speed bombers? Heavily armed bombers? Long-range bombers?
That's all practical history stuff and the full-production types are an essential component of that complex story (every built type was once a 'project' and had unbuilt variants which never saw the light of day). But the true 'secret projects' are also a vital part of this tapestry and need to be woven into the correct positions, with an explanation of what requirement they were supposed to meet, why they failed or succeeded to meet it and what happened to them during their development.
This book was originally supposed to be a straightforward expansion of my old Luftwaffe Secret Bombers bookazine, and no doubt many readers would still be happy with just that. But the more I worked on explanations for the 'projects' by scouring the primary sources, the more I found that those explanations kept bringing me back to the central narrative outlined above - the fundamental struggle to define the shape of the Luftwaffe and how it was to be employed. In other words, if you want to fully understand the 'projects', you have to understand the bigger picture too. Getting to grips with all this has been... a challenge.
