It all started - along with much else that was to keep me occupied for the next half-century - in the circle of the Regent cinema, Brighton, during September 1969. The film, obviously Battle of Britain, and the mesmeric opening sequence, with the line-up of Spanish-built He 111s being inspected. At an impressionable seven years of age, the geometry of the glazed nose was drama enough. During more recent viewings - and there have been many - I have never ceased to be fascinated by the movement of the light across the framed Perspex nose, shimmering on the transparent, fractured blocks of transparent greenhouse until, as the light moves round, the illuminated panels suddenly darken into blackness while others burst into luminescence. Unfortunately, it all became too much during the early aerial combat scenes of the film when the elegant, aerodynamic greenhouse dramatically erupted into a bloody charnel house of human demolition, and I was led, sobbing, to the foyer. Apart from the slender Profile Publication, I couldn't find a title dedicated the He 111 until 1979, when this book was published. At last I could get into the interior mysteries of that hall of mirrors. There have been better books on the 111 since - particularly Robert Forsyth and Eddie Creek's excellent Heinkel He 111: An Illustrated History, from 2014 - but the Nowarra book was my go-to reference for three decades.
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