Fortress England — Robert Jackson

For the beleaguered British people, it seems at times that the war will never end.

Ken Armstrong and the rest of his special squadron are dedicated to finding ways to reaching that end.

The Battle of Britain is over…but the threat of invasion is not. Germany's planes continue to sneak across to England, dropping bombs on her cities and fleeing again into the night.

For Armstrong, new possibilities have emerged, as his special squadron has been greatly expanded with new types of aircraft. Along with these planes come a new task: cooperate with the Royal Navy in attacking German shipping in the English Channel and North Sea.

But ‘Channel Stop' operations carry extreme risk. The pilots not only must brave storms of German flak in their attacks on enemy ships -- they also must contend with the vagaries of mother nature, struggling to fly missions in fog, rain, and snow that make finding the enemy as much down to luck as skill.

The Germans are banking on their newest warship, Bismarck, to turn the tide of the war in the Atlantic. This is a terrifying prospect for Great Britain, which already faces dwindling supplies due to the Germans' destruction of convoy ships bringing in fresh supplies.

Everything builds up to a final confrontation: buoyed by intelligence intercepted by their intelligence officers, England sets out on an assault on German battleships and cruisers that lurk in the French Atlantic ports, just waiting to put to sea and wreak havoc on Britain's vital maritime convoys…

Fortress England is the second book in Robert Jackson's Secret Squadron series.

Robert Jackson was born in the north Yorkshire village of Melsonby in 1941. A former pilot and navigation instructor, he was a squadron leader in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, experience that strongly influenced his writing career. A prolific writer, he has written more than fifty factual works devoted to aviation and military subjects, including Air Force: The RAF in the 1990s, operational histories of a wide range of aircraft, and reference works such as the Guinness Book of Air Warfare. He has also authored more than twenty novels, most of which take place against the backdrop of World War II, and has written popular science features for the Press Association.