May 1941. Somewhere in the Iraqi desert, an RAF flying school is all that stands between Hitler and the Middle East.

When Iraqi forces loyal to a pro-Nazi Baghdad coup surround the sleepy British base at Habbaniya and demand its surrender, the station's commander faces an impossible choice. His weapons are obsolete biplanes. His handful of pilots are raw cadets. And help is two weeks' march away across the desert.

Based on real events, 1941: Thirty Days in May follows three people caught in one of the Second World War's most remarkable forgotten campaigns. Maddie Miller is an American intelligence operative besieged in Baghdad, piecing together the coming storm from intercepted signals and rumour. Colin Wood is an RAF pilot whom she desperately tries to warn of the danger to come. And James McGovern is a British officer accompanying a relief column crawling across the desert from Palestine — knowing that if RAF Habbaniya falls before they arrive, the oil fields - and Britain's presence in the Middle East - fall with it.

Told across six months and culminating in thirty frantic days in May, this is the story of how a handful of student pilots and their instructors hold the line against an army of nine thousand.

The start of a brand new series of Maddie Miller war stories. For fans of Masters of the Air, SAS Rogue Heroes and Dunkirk.