ISBN 1-902304-33-2
234 pages

Acknowledgments; Foreword; Introduction and Preamble; photos; maps; Bibliography; Addenda to Hurricanes over Tobruk; Index

Appendices: A Potted History of GCII/7; My First Day in Sicily, Flg Off Gordon Wilson, RCAF; Malta's Spitfire IX - EN199; Italian Documentation reference; The Adventures of Flg Off Brendan Baker; Spitfire Pilots Aerial Combat Claims & Credits, Malta and Sicily; Spitfire Operational Losses & Pilot Casualties, Malta and Sicily; Spitfire Squadron Codes

   Brian Cull and Nicola Malizia co-authored with Christopher Shores several seminal air histories of the sortie-by-sortie genre, including Malta: The Hurricane Years and Malta: The Spitfire Year. The latest from Cull and Malizia—with Frederick Galea—picks up the story of the air war above and around Malta where they left it at the end of Malta: The Spitfire Year and, to a lesser extent, Shores' Fighters over Tunisia, with the same kind of detailed, day-by-day, dogfight-by-dogfight narrative.
   In this book, however, the authors focus specifically on Spitfire operations, including operations by other aircraft only so far as they bear on the Spits. The book opens with a quick recapitulation of Malta's role in the war and the state of the Allied air units on the island and the Luftwaffe and Regia Aeronautica forces in the region. The account then moves directly into "Spitbomber" missions against Sicily and the island of Lampedusa, and standing patrols over Malta. The action increases as Operation Husky grows closer, and the book concludes with air activity during the withdrawal of Axis forces following the campaign in Sicily.
   The book is divided into the following chapters:

Spitbombers: Malta on the Offensive, January-March 1943

Malta: The Thorn in Sicily's Side, April-May 1943

The Fall of Pantelleria, June 1943

The Blitz on Sicily, 1-9 July 1943

D-Day: Invasion, 10 July 1943

The Air Fighting Intensifies, 11-13 July 1943

The Air Battle is Won, 14-31 July 1943

The End in Sicily: The German Dunkirk, August 1943

   Readers familiar with the style of the Shores/Cull/Malizia team, or other works in this genre by Shores, will recognize how Spitfires over Sicily is assembled from air unit diaries, after action reports, memoirs, letters, personal diaries, etc. As usual, the authors are careful to provide aircraft IDs (including serial numbers), pilot names and ranks, and similar supporting facts. While the bulk of the material comes from Allied accounts—mostly British and Commonwealth, but some American fighter squadrons flew Spitfires from Malta and neighboring Gozo—these have been compared to Axis records, and the authors offer as much as possible from the perspective of the Luftwaffe and Regia Aeronautica. In particular, readers familiar with Prien's Jagdgeschwader 53 will find some material about German operations from that series.
   Here's a typical slice of the action:

   The action was now relentless as raid followed raid. More B-25s and B-26s attacked Gerbini and its satellites shortly after 1500, Spitfires from 81 and 242 Squadrons providing top cover. Bombs were seen to burst on the south-west corner of the main aerodrome, where fires were started. Four Bf109s were sighted at 20,000 feet over Gerbini but no engagement ensued. As the formation made its way back across the coast, three small naval vessels were observed off Bruccoli, two stationary and one steaming westwards, but were not attacked. Before the raiders and their escorts had reached their home bases, the next formation was on its way to its way to attack Gerbini, 20 Spitfires from 126 and 1435 Squadrons providing top cover to the B-17s and their close-escort P-38s. The results of this latest attack could not be seen by the Spitfire pilots owing to heavy smoke over the target area, who anyway had their hands full when Bf109Gs and Macchis attempted to intercept over Gerbini. A Messerschmitt was claimed damaged by Flt Sgt F.K. Halcombe (JK368/V-J) of 1435 Squadron, Plt Off Chandler (JK139/V-X) similarly claimed a Macchi damaged, while Flg Off Geoff White of 126 Squadron shot down another:

"...A few Macchis made an attack on the edge of the formation. I attacked one of them, fired a burst at it and then followed it right down to the ground and eventually shot it down after a lot of acrobatic flying. The pilot baled out. There was quite a lot of AA once the pilot got out because he actually baled out right over his base. I looked around and saw a big aerodrome and thought it wasn't a very good place to be. I did a fairly fast climbing turn, and when I looked back there were about 30 AA bursts following me up. The first one was rather close because I heard a sharp crack."

His victim was possibly Serg Corrado Patrizi of 84^ Squadriglia who baled out of his disabled MC205V near Gerbini. A second Macchi pilot, Sottoten Leonardo Ferrulli of 91^ Squadrigilia, who was seen by colleagues to shoot down a bomber from which three men baled out, and a P-38, was then himself shot down by a Spitfire. He managed to bale out but was too low, his aircraft crashing near Scordia.

   Although there is enough coverage of the ground and naval aspects of the Sicilian campaign to provide context for the air ops, this is almost entirely an account of operations in the sky, and as such nicely complements the best books about Husky, such as Bitter Victory by Carlo D'Este. In addition to air combat, the book tracks the movement of squadrons, the comings and goings of squadron commanders (and some pilots), crash landings, rescues of ditched pilots, unofficial "test flights" of "liberated" Axis aircraft, captures and escapes, and so on. The authors also offer photos of pilots and aircraft as well as orders of battle and lengthy tabular compilations of claims, confirmed victories, aircraft losses, casualties, etc.
   Spitfires over Sicily is one of a new series from Grub Street, with Cull as the lead author, treating operations by specific aircraft in specific battles. (Already published in the series is Hurricanes over Tobruk; next on the list is Hurricanes over Malta.) This is a splendidly researched book that presents vast amounts of fresh detail about the subject, and it's recommended to anyone with an interest in air operations in general, in the story of Sicily or Malta during the war, and in particular to fans of the blow-by-blow style of air history.
   Available from online booksellers, local bookshops, directly from Grub Street, or through the US distributor, Seven Hills.
   Thanks to Seven Hills for providing this review copy.