This is a long awaited book. As far as I am aware, the last account of Voss’ life in English appeared as No 1: Werner Voss in the Albatros Publications ‘Aces and Aeroplanes’ series in 1986. And, as Voss was undoubtedly one of the greatest World War I fighter pilots, he deserves to have had more attention than he has. This has now been to a large extent corrected. His many combats have been thoroughly analysed and in many cases, previous wisdom has been changed and put right. The question of who finally shot him down has been answered to my satisfaction also, although I wonder why a consummate pilot like him saw fit to take on virtually the whole of 56 Squadron single handed, when he could so easily have slipped away.

Sadly, we still don’t know much about his personal life; was he at loggerheads with Manfred von Richthofen, did he have a girl friend called Doris, was he really hated by the establishment because he fraternised with his mechanics? And why was Raymond Collishaw obsessed with the conviction that Rhys Davids did not shoot him down? All this is discussed and the author’s point of view very cogently put. After 119 pages of narrative there are seven appendices covering everything from 56 Squadron combat reports, to Voss’ victory list, intelligence reports on the Fokker F.1 103/17 (Voss’ personal plane), his service record and so on. There are also 22 pages of interesting photographs and some detailed maps. This book is a very complete record of what is currently known about the subject and will, I am sure generate a lot of discussion which, hopefully, will lead to missing information being unearthed.