Mike Bechthold holds a PhD in History from the University of New South Wales, Canberra, Australia and an MA & Honours BA from Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Mike is the author or editor of eight books and numerous articles. His most recent book is Flying to Victory: Raymond Collishaw and the Western Desert Campaign (University of Oklahoma Press, 2017) and he is the co-author of a series of guidebooks about the Canadian battlefields of the Second World. He specializes in the fields of military air power (especially tactical air operations in the First and Second World Wars), the Canadian army in Normandy and Northwest Europe, and the Canadian Corps in the Great War. For 22 years Mike worked as the Communications Director of the Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies and the Managing Editor of Canadian Military History, an academic quarterly journal. Mike is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a Fellow of the Gregg Centre for the Study of War and Society at the University of New Brunswick, and an Associate Air Force Historian.
Flying to Victory was selected for Royal Air Force Chief of the Air Staff’s Reading List for 2019-2020!
Publications – Books
Publications – Featured Articles
- “Spitfires, Typhoons, and Mustangs: RCAF Fighters in Normandy,” Royal Canadian Air Force Journal 8, no. 2 (Spring 2019), 48-67. <LINK>
- “D-Day Memories: First-Hand Accounts From Those Who Were There,” Canada’s History, June-July 2019, 28-34. <LINK>
- “Eyes in the Sky: Aerial Reconnaissance and D-Day,” Canada’s History, June-July 2019, 35-37. <LINK>
- “Dieppe Reconsidered,” Dorchester Review 8, no. 2 (Autumn/Winter 2018), 38-41. <LINK>
- “Bloody April Revisited: The Royal Flying Corps at the Battle of Arras, 1917,” British Journal of Military History 4, no. 2 (2018), 50-69. <LINK>
- “‘Deeply regret to inform you’: War and Loss in the Trapp Family,” Canada’s First World War: A Centennial Series on ActiveHistory.ca (June 2016), <LINK>
- “Canada [military history] from WW1 to the Present,” Oxford Bibliographies Online, 2014.
- “Culture and National Character on the Great War Battlefield: The Experience of the Australian, British and Canadian Armies during the Battle of Arras, 1917,” War & Society 32, no.2 (August 2013). <LINK>
- “A Stepping Stone to Success: Operation Battleaxe (June 1941) and the Development of the British Tactical Air Doctrine,” Journal of Military & Strategic Studies 14, no.1 (Fall 2011). <LINK>
- “Lost in Normandy: The Odyssey of Worthington Force, 9 August 1944,” Canadian Military History 19, no.2 (Spring 2010), pp.5-24. <LINK>
- “Frank R. MacMackin – Brave Young Warrior,” Canadian Army Journal, Volume 10, Number Winter 2008, pp.96-100. <LINK>
- “Applied History: 1944 Normandy Campaign Battlefield Tours and Staff Rides,” Canadian Military History, Spring 2006, Volume 15, Number 2, pp.5-22. <LINK>
- “‘One of the greatest moments in my life’: Lessons Learned on the Canadian Battle of Normandy Foundation Study Tour,” Defence Studies (UK), 5, no. 1 (Mar 2005), pp.27-36.
- “A Question of Success: American Tactical Air Doctrine and Practice in North Africa, 1942-1943,” Journal of Military History, July 2004, pp.821-851. <LINK>
- “‘The Development of an Unbeatable Combination’: US Close Air Support in Normandy,” Canadian Military History, Winter 1999, Volume 8, Number 1, pp.7-20. <LINK>
- “Air Support in the Breskens Pocket: The Case of First Canadian Army and 84 Group RAF,” Canadian Military History, Autumn 1994, Volume 3, Number 2, pp.53-62. <LINK>
- “Tactical Air Power, Its Effectiveness during the Normandy Campaign: The Evidence of Operational Research.” CAHS: The Journal of the Canadian Aviation Historical Society, Part 1, Spring 1993, pp.12-21 and Part 2, Summer 1993, pp.54-59, 68.
Mike Bechthold, PhD 