Ken Adam and the 1944 Normandy campaign
Golrush007
South AfricaPosts: 3,418Quartermasters
I'm just about to finish reading Normandy 44: D-Day and the Epic 77 Day Battle for France by James Holland, a recently published history of the Normandy campaign. It's a detailed and well written account of the various battles over the course of the campaign, and includes a lot of interesting detail and discussion of the various armies' tactics, operational organisation and hardware. But one aspect that I thought would be of particular interest to Bond fans is that one of the characters whose story Holland tracks throughout the campaign is one Flight Lieutenant Ken Adam. He served in a squadron flying Hawker Typhoons which terrorised German ground forces with strafing machine guns and rocket attacks. The Germans referred to these fighter-bombers as Jabos. I knew from the special features on the Bond DVDs that Ken Adam was an RAF pilot in WWII despite being a German who could have been shot as a traitor if captured. It was fascinating to learn some detail of Adam's operational exploits from Holland's book. I definitely recommend the book for those interested in WWII and D-Day. I visited many of the battle sites back in 2006, so was able to recall many of the locations when they were discussed in the book.
I've also been listening to James Holland's WWII podcast called We Have Ways of Making You Talk in the last couple of months and have enjoyed it immensely and I recommend it to any WWII buffs.
I've also been listening to James Holland's WWII podcast called We Have Ways of Making You Talk in the last couple of months and have enjoyed it immensely and I recommend it to any WWII buffs.
Comments
I remember there was a topic on AJB once about who you would like to invite for dinner of everyone involved in the Bond franchise. I mentioned Ken Adam, mostly becuase of my interest in archtecture, but also because I knew he was a WWII veteran.