Dr Sarah-Louise Miller

Dr Sarah-Louise Miller is an historian of warfare and airpower, and is a full-time lecturer at the Defence Studies Department, King’s College London. Her research focuses on warfare in the twentieth century, particularly the Second World War, looking at airpower and air innovation, intelligence and multi-domain integration. Sarah completed her MPhil at Anglia Ruskin University, followed by a PhD at King’s College London’s Department of War Studies, which she completed in July 2022. After a brief period as a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge, she is currently a visiting scholar at the University of Oxford’s Faculty of History, and a member of Kellogg College, Oxford. Sarah is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a member of the King’s Intelligence and Security Group, and an Associate of both the Laughton Naval History and Maritime Strategy Unit and the Freeman Air and Space Institute at King’s College London. Sarah is the author of several books and is currently working on a history of the Lancaster Bomber. She also appears regularly on British television, having featured on various history documentaries for the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Sky History.

Research Interests

• War and Conflict
• Airpower and Aviation
• Maritime
• Intelligence
• WWII History

Sarah’s primary research is in the history of air and sea power and intelligence. Her first major research project examined the use of intelligence and technological innovation by the Royal Air Force in the Second World War, examining how both affected the RAF’s overall strategy and tactics throughout the conflict. This work was published in March 2023 as a book, entitled, The Women Behind the Few. Her PhD thesis studied the use of intelligence and technology in the Second World War at Sea, focusing on British and American naval intelligence in the Battle of the Atlantic and in the Pacific Naval War. This research is due to be published as a book in the Spring of 2024.

Sarah is currently working on a commissioned history of the Lancaster Bomber, which is due to be published in the Spring of 2024. This work will examine the aircraft in the context of the many people associated with it, from its’ inception as an idea right up to the use of one of the few surviving Lancasters in the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight today.

She is also writing a history of Hawaii’s wartime women, and a book on airpower and innovation during the Battle of Britain.

Selected Publications 

Book

The Women Behind the Few: The Women’s Auxiliary Air Force and British Intelligence During the Second World War (Biteback Publishing, 2023) https://www.bitebackpublishing.com/books/the-women-behind-the-few

Forthcoming Books

The Lancaster Story (due for release Spring 2024)

Women in Allied Naval Intelligence in the Second World War: A Close Secret (due for release in Spring 2024)

Hawaii’s Women at War (due for release in 2025)

Academic Articles

“The Women Who Watched the Waves: The Women’s Air Raid Defense Organisation in World War II Hawaii”, British Journal for Military History, 8/3, 2022 https://bjmh.gold.ac.uk/article/view/1652

Guest-editor for 2023 special edition of the British Journal for Military History. Special edition on military intelligence, due for publication in mid-2023.

“The Women Behind the Few: The Women’s Auxiliary Air Force and British Air Intelligence during the Second World War”, Aspects of History, Issue 15, April/May 2023

Commissioned Book Reviews

Peter Kornicki’s Eavesdropping on the Emperor: Interrogators and Codebreakers in Britain’s War with Japan, H Sci-Med-Tech https://www.hnet.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=57654

Paul Kennedy’s Victory at Sea: Naval Power and the Transformation of the Global Order in World War II, Aspects of History magazine https://aspectsofhistory.com/book_reviews/victory-at-sea-by-paul-kennedy/

Lewis F. McIntyre’s Take Charge and Move Out: The Founding Fathers of TACAMO, Journal of Military History, 86/4, 2022 https://www.proquest.com/docview/2727705265

Peter Harmsen’s War in the Far East: Japan Runs Wild, 1942-1943, commissioned by War in History Journal, published in volume 30/3, 2023 https://doi.org/10.1177/09683445231183773e