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AN Ilkley author who shows a remarkable talent for dipping into the giant haystack of history and pulling out a rare needle has done it again with his latest book First Blitz.

Neil Hanson takes us back, not to the familiar defiance of Hitler's bombing raids in the 1940s, but to an earlier conflict where even the rumour of death dropping from the sky could send Londoners fleeing in panic.

Mr Hanson said: "A world away from the killing fields of France was a battle that could have changed the face of history. In the summer of 1918 the German Fire Plan' aimed to burn London and Paris to the ground with a devastating new weapon, the Electron incendiary bomb."

Tens of thousands of the bombs, identical to those used to create the controversial fire storms in Hamburg and Dresden in the Second World War were to rain down on both cities and engulf them in flames.

The firestorms would overwhelm the fire services, cause devastation, enormous casualties, mass panic and force the Allies to sue for peace.

At the last possible moment, the nerve of the supreme commander failed and with German armies creaking badly at the front, Ludendorff was forced to sue for peace. The German commander feared dreadful reprisals if the raids had gone ahead.

Mr Hanson said: "The events and decisions taken in the course of those fateful days were as important as anything that happened on the Western Front."

Allthough First Blitz is of interest to military historians, Mr Hanson has produced the book with the general reader in mind, and he delights in telling the human stories often hidden by the great events.

"It is the individuals caught up in those events and who have no control over what is happening that fascinate me," said Mr Hanson.

In his previous books, such as The Dreadful Judgement about the Great Fire of London, Mr Hanson has questioned the received wisdom about the past and First Blitz is no different.

Barely a decade-and-a-half after the Wright brothers took to the air in their canvass and string contraption to make the first powered flight, German Giant' four-engined bombers, carrying nine crew, were taking off to deliver death and destruction to the streets of London. They were as big as any of the massive bombers used by the Allies in the Second World War.

Civilians, not for the first time and certainly not the last, were seen as legitimate targets of warfare and they viewed this terrible development with horror.

But as Mr Hanson shows, until now not many people were aware just how close they came to the most unimaginable horror of all and how disaster was averted at the last minute.

First Blitz is published by Doubleday in hardback, costing £17.99. Mr Hanson will be taking part in a book signing at The Grove Bookshop this Saturday at 11am.

9:30am Thursday 22nd May 2008

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