1940s-1950s era WWII books?

My mother recalls growing up that her father (a WWII vet) had a large, multi-volume set of WWII history or encyclopedia books. They had red and possibly gray covers and red bindings--they were all of the same series of histories. Produced sometime between the 1940s and early 1950s as the photos below date prior to 1960. My grandma threw them out at a later point.

I think they're the set of books on the second shelf of the bookshelf in the following pics. Anyone want to help me find out what series they exactly were? Would be interesting to know what Grandpa wanted to know about the war he'd fought in.

 

Difficult to tell precisely from the photo, but these look to me like Hutchinson's 'History Of The Second Great War' by John Hammerton ( 8 or 9 volumes, 1940/46) and Odhams' 'The War In Pictures' ( 6 volumes - 1940/46).

These near-complementary sets were issues by these two 'popular' publishers relatively inexpensively, and in co-operation with the Ministry of Information. As 'morale-boosting' publications the publishers were given a generous allocation of paper.

They can still be found in charity shops and on e-bay at reasonable cost. As a kid, I used to pick them up at Jumble sales and pored over the photos, but now of course they seem very dated and the photos are over-familiar. Still interesting, though......

( Just realised - I have no idea here the photos were taken - so my response assumes UK which may be quite wrong. So - if you're in Canada, Australia, New Zealand or the USA - there may well have been equivalent sets issued by other publishers.....)

 

Second vote here for Martin's suggestion.
Hutchinson's & War illustrated looks quite likely to me.