Books

Released March 2023

Biteback Publishing

This is the little-known story of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, the women’s branch of the Royal Air Force in the Second World War, and the vital work they did behind the scenes to ensure the success of some of the most important missions of the war. During the Battle of Britain, for example, WAAF personnel worked in the radar network and the Dowding system, the world’s most sophisticated air defence system, as well as in the Y listening service, intercepting German ground-to-air and air-to-air communications. During the Blitz, they worked with ground-controlled interception radar to aid Fighter and Bomber Commands in protecting Britain’s civilian population from German area bombing.

They assisted with the Allied offensive bombing campaign in various capacities, including working behind the scenes leading up to the ‘thousand-bomber raids’. It was WAAF personnel who were behind the discovery of the terrifying German V-weapons and jet-propelled aircraft and assisted with the sinking of German battleships such as the Tirpitz. The WAAFs collected and disseminated intelligence ahead of the Normandy landings in June 1944 and worked in signals intelligence throughout the landings and the Allied advance into Europe. They were also present in their hundreds at Bletchley Park, working with the Government Code and Cypher School on air intelligence and liaising with the RAF’s Y service.

Though the work and memory of the pilots of Fighter and Bomber Commands are rightfully revered and treasured, their success was made possible by the WAAFs working behind the scenes. This book aims to recover this missing piece of history, granting the WAAFs the recognition they deserve for their wartime contribution to British military intelligence.

Released May 2024

Michael O’Mara Press

The Lancaster Story takes readers on a remarkable journey through the history of an aviation icon. Between its introduction in 1942 and the end of the Second World War, the Avro Lancaster flew more than 150,000 sorties, dropped more than 600,000 tons of explosives and took the Allied fight to Nazi Germany.

The true workhorse of the RAF’s bomber corps, the ‘Lanc’ featured on some of the most daring and celebrated missions of the war, including the heroic Dambusters raid and the Operation Hydra bombing. These and many other successes came at a significant cost, however: almost half of the 7,377 Lancasters deployed into service were lost in action.

Using archival documents, letters and first-hand accounts, The Lancaster Story delivers a dramatic and vividly rendered account of the most successful RAF bomber of the Second World War and the lives of the men and women who flew, designed, constructed, maintained it. Combining individual stories into a gripping, panoramic narrative, it paints a complete portrait of the battle over Europe, and the Lancaster’s unique and decisive role in it.

Under contract with Pegasus Books

Due 2025

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, many American women were keen to join the Allied war effort in defense of their nation. Few, however, would see the carnage of Pearl Harbor up close, or smell the smoke that rose from the ships as they burned and broke up, spilling their oil and littering the harbour with metal and men. The women of Hawaii saw these sights and smelled these smells, and were determined to defend their islands, as well as the interests of the United States and her Allies. Their direct involvement in this total war ranged from voluntary work in the Red Cross to paid employment in the women’s military services, and from 1941 until the end of the war they worked tirelessly to support the American war effort.

Where their sisters on the mainland were relatively safe, women in Hawaii lived and worked under the constant threat of enemy attack, coping with martial law, black-outs and all manner of challenges associated with living in a war zone. These women – American, native Hawaiian, Pacific and Polynesian Islander and Asian women among them – contributed towards the Allied fight in the Pacific and are a significant part of its narrative, yet they are almost always missing from it. For the first time, this is their story.

Sarah was inspired to write this book after visiting the Hawaiian Islands in 2019 during her PhD research. After the completion of her PhD in May 2022 she continued her research on Pacific and Polynesian Island women at war as a visiting scholar at the University Oxford. She is currently at Oxford working on research into the intersection of island-identity (the anthropological idea of “islandness”), colonialism and the idea of an “allied effort” prior to and during the Second World War. Hawaii’s Women at War will feature this research.

Release: November 2024

Bloomsbury Academic

From the start of the Second World War until its conclusion, the crews of Allied ships fought every day to survive their perilous journeys across the Atlantic, all too aware of the German U-boat menace lurking beneath the waves. In the Pacific, major battles were fought on the ocean-battlefield, as the Allies pushed back against the mighty Imperial Japanese Navy. In both of these arenas of naval war, the courage of sailors and the might of manufacturing played an important role. There was, however, a hidden army of people working night and day behind the scenes to provide the Allied navies with information that would save lives, maximise resources and influence the course of battles the naval war itself.

In Britain, members of the Women’s Royal Naval Service worked at Bletchley Park and its outstations, as well as at the Admiralty in London and in the Submarine Tracking Room, to provide the Royal Navy with crucial information that enabled it to position and route its ships strategically and safely. In the United States, the WAVES worked in their thousands in Washington D.C. to collect, analyse and disseminate the intercepted communications of the German and Japanese navies. Like their sisters in Britain, they directly contributed to the Battle of the Atlantic, as well as to the Battles of the Coral Sea, Midway and Guadalcanal. These women made vital contributions to the Allied naval war effort. This is their story.

A Close Secret is the first book to carry out an in-depth examination of the wartime work of women in the US and British naval services toward Allied naval intelligence during WWII and focuses on their contributions behind the scenes during the Battle of the Atlantic and the Pacific Naval War – two well-known arenas of war whose narratives women are almost always absent from.