Book Recommendations

[Dubbo]

Pooka generously sent me a copy of "The Thousand-Mile War" by Brian Garfield.

This is a detailed account of the war in the Aleutians and is really well-done. He offers reasons as to why the whole campaign is generally not known even though it had some of the bloodiest fighting during the whole of WW2.

Two particular stories stand out. One took place during the invasion of Attu where, in a blinding snow storm 2 companies of US soldiers were being pinned down by 9 Japanese machine gun nests. A Private Fred Barnett remarked to a companion that he was fed up, and taking his rifle and a string of grenades, stood up and walked into the snowstorm. Periodically there came the sound of shooting from the enemy positions punctuated by the heavier explosions of grenades. Eventually there was silence and after a time Barnett emerged from the blinding snow and waved his fellow soldiers forward. He had charged 9 machine gun emplacements and wiped them all out, without a scratch.

The second one involves the pilot of a B-24, Captain Lucian Wernick and one particularly dicey landing after a raid. A flak burst had taken out the nose wheel and hydraulic systems leaving Wernick with a pressing problem. Having decided early in the campaign not to carry parachutes on board (as survival time in the water was counted in minutes), he had to somehow put the B-24 down without a nose-wheel nor brakes on the marsden matting runways of their base. Ditching was not an option and nor was a wheels-up landing (According to the book these rarely worked out in B-24s) The problem with no nose wheel meant that as soon as the nose of the bomber hit the steel mesh of the runaway, the sea of sparks would pretty much guarantee an inferno. Wernick approached his base and dropped to sea level, which was slightly lower than the strip. Coming over the shore gear and flaps down he pulled back and washed off enough speed to drop the B-24 onto it's main gear. He had assembled his whole crew just aft of the main gear to keep the centre of gravity slightly to the rear. As they touched down, he had his crew walk towards the rear of the fuselage while he played with the throttles, balancing the bomber on the main wheels as they trundled down the runaway. Eventually the whole crew was jammed up against the tail turret and the end of the runway was fast approaching. The Liberator slipped off the threshold into the mud and then having come to a standstill the nose slowly dropped to the ground. Everyone survived and the B-24 was repaired.

The book is full of little stories like these and is a good read. Interesting and informative.

[Dubbo]

"Bring Back My Stringbag" by Lord Kilbracken

Just finished this one and what a good read. It follows John Godley (later to become Lord Kilbracken) as a young Irish lad who thought the wait for RAF looked too long and decided to join the RVNR instead to become a pilot. He had been keen on flying since he was a youngster and had even started building a Flying Flea as a teenager until his mother banned him from finishing it. So after completing flight school with visions of flying fast, powerful & modern combat aircraft he ended up being posted to a Swordfish squadron. And there he stayed growing to love the Swordfish. He spent the majority of the war flying from MAC-ships (converted grain and oil tankers) running between England and Canada and later on an escort carrier to Murmansk.

:

What was interesting that although his career was extremely perilous, there was very little contact with the enemy. It was also interesting to see the arc of this young bloke who initially lived to fly to end up grounding himself by the war's end and never piloting an aircraft again. Having survived almost 900 hours in Swordfish, he was almost killed because of a design fault in the Fairey Barracuda, after he took over a training squadron ashore.

Nice outline of the horrendous flying conditions (not to mention that the Swordfish had no defensive armament) and the mysterious rivalry between the regular navy & volunteers. One memorable tale involves a hurricane (weather), The North Sea and a runaway tractor on the hangar deck.

Makes me wish we had Swordfish in the game. Lots of ideas for missions (aside from Taranto and Bismarck) Absorbing and entertaining :thumbright:

[Blairgowrie]

My brother-in-law flew Swordfishes during the war and was in on the Taranto raid. His nickname was Tolly Jar!

[Dubbo]

War in a Stringbag by Charles Lamb

A great compliment to the previous Swordfish book, this FAA pilot was on board the Courageous when she was torpedoed and this book follows him through the whole war including the Taranto raid and Greece. In addition to anti-sub patrols, mine-laying, bombing and torpedo sorties, he also did special-ops in the Swordfish such as dropping and picking up spies and other covert operatives. On one of these missions, he was captured by the Vichy-French after crash-landing in Algiers. The story of his internment was an eye-opener.

The book also explains the origin of the nickname for this beloved bi-plane (which I never knew)

Recommended in spades. :thumbright:

[Dubbo]

The Flying Tigers by John Toland

This is a short book and outlines Chennault and his Tigers in China. It is really brief but it is a good compliment to "God is my Co-pilot" by Robert Scott.

There were some anomalies with the book such as the claim that the Oscar was an improvement over the original fixed-undercarraige Zero and then there was Scott's battle with some twin engined Messerschmit 109s. But it does provide a nice overview of Chennaults campaign against the Japanese. The copy I have up also has photographs, some of which were very good.

Worth picking up if you see a copy lying around somewhere

[Dubbo]

The War of the Rats by David L. Robbins

This was given to me by ZC on our recent trip down there and is a great read. It is a novelised account of the battle in Stalingrad, focusing on the sniper duel that was made famous by the movie "Enemy at the Gates" (The movie was based on this book).

Now I said it is a great read, but that doesn't make it historically accurate. In fact, there is is one character in the book that the author admits is a fictional one but adds that this composite character "lives an authentic a life in Stalingrad as could be devised for him" (This guy is actually my favourite character) The writer also admits freely that 2 of the other main characters who are non-fictional, have their backgrounds presented "with some details imagined or altered for dramatic purposes" Which kind of throws the whole accuracy thing out the window. But with that in mind, the novel gives a chilling account of the war in Stalingrad and the conditions faced by both sides. In that regard it is a great read.

One real sticking point with me is the writers referral to everything German being "Nazi". I know that doing this has been popular over time but I find it inaccurate and annoying. My grandfather and uncles were not nazis although they fought in WW2 inthe Luftwaffe and the Wermacht. In this book many times the writer refers to nazi fighters, bomber, tanks, bullets, rifles et cetera. I can understand the Russian characters referring to everything German as nazi in their speech, but not the writer in his descriptive passages.

Aside from this, and as long as you are not expecting precise accuracy, this is a really good look at life and death in Stalingrad for those 6 months. :thumbleft:

[JensenPark]

ok, Dubbo...

enough with the book reviews...

I want more pictures of your trip!!

:x

[Dubbo]

Look down you bastard :wink:

[JensenPark]

Look down you bastard :wink:

Why am I looking down at my crotch?

[Dubbo]

Why am I looking down at my crotch?

Probably because you, like most of us here, are wondering if you are in fact, still a man..............

And because that's probably where that stench is coming from............ (you really need to get that looked at)

:wink:

[JensenPark]

Why am I looking down at my crotch?

Probably because you, like most of us here, are wondering if you are in fact, still a man..............

And because that's probably where that stench is coming from............ (you really need to get that looked at)

:wink:

Ok, getting too gross now.

I will save my retort till next we meet - and then run like hell as you will probably want to punch me.

[Rattler]

Given the subject matter that surrounds this hobby of ours I figured we should start a book/author recommendation thread.

You can recommend any books I guess but I figure aviation or war would be a good starting point. You are welcome to review said book or you can tell us why it was good. (Or not)

Here's one I was mentioning to the guys last night (24 June) as we were busy trying to attack/defend a carrier in drydock: "Terror In The Starboard Seat" by David McIntosh. Great read about Mossie F/B operations. I believe that I even have it around somewhere, but in our last 4-5 moves it has become inextricably packed. "The late Dave Mcintosh will be remembered for this terrifying, hilarious, bittersweet account of his experiences in the Royal Canadian Air Force during the Second World War. As the starboard-seat navigator for a JewishAmerican de Havilland Mosquito pilot hell-bent on single-handedly defeating the Nazis, the author was wellplaced to appreciate the harsh realities of war."

[Blairgowrie]

Sorry to say Dubbo, I just couldn't get into that Alan Furst book.

[Dubbo]

No need to be sorry mate. It just means I won't have to lend you mine :wink: I guess we can still remain friends.

[Cold_Gambler]

Just finishing Panzer Leader by Heinz Guderian. Picked it up for a quarter at a book sale at work

Very interesting reading, really takes you inside the command structure of the Wehrmacht, but also to the battlefield as he very much believed that he had to be with the engaged units to command effectively.

[Dubbo]

Great!! 2 more books to hunt down. Both sound pretty good. If you enjoyed reading about the German tanks, there's another great german tank book called "Panzer Commander" by Hans Von Luck

Von Luck covered Poland, France, North Africa, Italy & Russia, from 1939 until 1945 earning the Knight's Cross along the way and meeting a bunch of pivotal German commanders. And he writes well. Like Hartmann he was captured by the Russians in the end and held in one of the camps for a number of years after the war. Very detailed and enjoyable to read, this book is acknowleged as one of the most balanced Second World War German military memoirs in existence.

:thumbright:

[Dubbo]

Just finished Blood Red Snow by Gunther Koschorrek. Brilliant read! Loaned to me by the ever-generous Jensenpark, this was written by a German soldier who kept a diary (against orders) from 1943 at Stalingrad until the end of the war. He rediscovered the diary in the early 90s and wrote this account. Interestingly enough, the pages of the diary were lost for many years after his wife divorced him and moved to the US with his daughter in the early 50s. 40 years later his daughter tracked him down and wanted to know the man who had written the diary she had been holding all these years - the only connection to her father.

A really interesting account told from the grass roots level.

2 thumbs up :thumbright: :thumbright:

[Waldo.Pepper]

OK you got me with Blood Red Snow Dubbo. I will have to read that one. I didn't think much of Forgotten Soldier so this should make a good one to compare it with.

I am still pouring through RADAR and radio manuals so I cannot offer much to this thread.

Perhaps volume one of The History of US Electronic Warfare. (by Alfred Price on commission and with the assistance and input of the Veterans themselves - specifically the Society of Old Crows).

It is excellent and has many revelations. Many, many, many things that happened during the war were heavily influenced by developments in these emerging technologies. The way Il2 neglects communication, navigation and Radar is becoming a huge immersion killer to me.

[Cold_Gambler]

Thanks for the suggestion Dubbo . Never thought I'd find the tank battles so interesting.

[Dubbo]

I haven't done any for a while because I've been buried in a couple of Ken Follet novels.

One I read a while ago on Zeuscat's recommendation was called Death Traps by one Belton Y. Cooper.

A maintenance officer who served in the legendary Third Armored Division ("Spearhead"), Cooper was charged with the critical task of locating damaged Shermans, directing their recovery, and ensuring the flow of new or repaired tanks to frontline units. From the Normandy invasion to V-E day, Cooper witnessed the folly of Patton’s logic firsthand. The author calculates (with only a touch of irony) that he "has seen more knocked out tanks than any other living American." His eyewitness observations confirmed what American tank crews discovered in combat: the Sherman was badly outclassed by German medium and heavy tanks, most notably the Mark V Panther and the Mark VI Tiger. With their heavier armor, the Panther and Tiger were almost impervious to rounds fired from the Sherman’s 75 or 76 mm main gun; conversely, the 88 mm gun on the German tanks usually made short work of their American opponents.

Tabulating the results of this mismatch, Cooper highlights the staggering cost of the Army’s flawed choice for its main battle tank. Over the next 11 months, the Third Armored Division, which began the Normandy campaign with 232 M4 tanks, would see 648 of its Shermans destroyed in combat, with another 700 knocked out of commission before being repaired and returned to service—a cumulative loss rate of 580 percent. Casualties among tank crews also skyrocketed, producing an acute shortage of qualified personnel. By late 1944, Cooper recalls, the Army was sending newly arrived infantrymen into combat as replacement tank crews. Some of these recruits received only one day of armor training before being dispatched to the front in their M4s.

But Death Traps is more than a statistical analysis or a collection of wartime remembrances. The author effectively recounts the years of prewar ne-glect and underfunding that sometimes resulted in poor acquisition decisions. And he also succeeds in depicting the valiant tankers and resourceful maintenance crews who battled long odds and kept American tank units in combat.

Sometimes I found myself reading stuff that the author had already stated or related but he still wrote fairly well and it makes for an easy read. 2 thumbs up :thumbright: :thumbleft:

[JensenPark]

Dub: please bring that book on Saturday.

[Dubbo]

Saturday? Please?

[JensenPark]

sorry, please bring that book on Saturday.

I'll bring beer. Yes...that's right, my Aussie friend...beeeeeeeeer!

[Blairgowrie]

LUCKY THIRTEEN by Hugh Godefroy

A great read about a Canadian who joined the RCAF in 1941 and finished the war as a Wing Commander. For a short while in 1942, he was taken off active ops and posted to a group which tested all different types of aircraft including a captured FW 190.

You won't be disappointed in this one. A must for all Spitty lovers.

[JensenPark]

Just ordered Lucky Thirteen BG...thanks for the tip.

Waldo, Dubb can lend you my copy of the eastern front epic - we'll do a trade off at the airshow.