I’m not sure I can articulate what it is about illustrations and paintings that can often be more satisfying than photographs — perhaps it is simply the touch of the artist’s vision and imagination — but whatever that quality is, this lovely volume has it in spades.

Peter Jacobs’ impressively researched account will engross students of the air war in Europe with two parallel tracks: first, the evolution of each side’s strategies and tactics and second, perhaps even more fascinatingly, the desperate technological race that ensued between Bomber Command, as it tried to find its targets in the dark, and the Luftwaffe’s Nachtjagd, as it in turn tried to find and destroy the intruding British bombers.