Originally conceived as a carrier-born maritime attack aircraft, the Blackburn design included many original features such as Boundary Layer Control, a system which blew hot air over the flying surfaces to increase lift when landing.
It is now almost exactly a hundred years since a heavier-than-air craft first took off and landed on a warship, and from the very beginning flying at sea made unique demands on men and machines.
Although over 330,000 British and French soldiers were evacuated from the Dunkirk beaches between 26 May and 4 June, many thousands remained in France, most under French command.
Throughout the relatively short yet highly distinguished history of the Royal Air Force there has been a tendency for the men and women of the Service to be overshadowed by the glamour of the aircraft.
The British Army is the UK's second largest operator of military aircraft, fielding more than 300 armed helicopters, fixed wing surveillance aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles.
This is the story of one of the RAF's oldest and most distinguished heavy bomber squadrons in WW2, although an outline history of the unit since it was formed in WW1 and its post-war history are included.
For much of World War II England provided the only western European base from which the British and American air forces could take the war into Nazi-occupied Europe and Germany itself.
While best known as being the scene of the most terrible carnage in the WW1 the French department of the Somme has seen many other battles from Roman times to 1944.
"e;A useful review of the development of a classic jet bomber that saw widespread service in the Royal Air Force and was exported to many overseas air forces.
Dramatic photographs of Nazi Germany's shocking Ardennes Offensive that nearly turned the tide of World War II-from the author of In Pursuit of Hitler.
The Battleground Europe series has helped create a new audience for the story of the desperate battles of World War I, But up to now the series has largely been concerned with the ground war.