What are you reading - Part II

[Stephen]

Frigate / Carrier / Submarine by John Wingate 

 

Written in 1980 This is a trilogy about the Royal Navy in a fictional conflict with the Soviet Union at sea. They're very well written and realistic, very reminiscent of Douglas Reeman.

 

All downloadable on Kindle.

[TheBaron]

In something of an urban groove at present so having just finished reading this stark map of greed:

 

 

I've just moved on to David Dickson's well-written:

- which came highly recommended and is living up to expectation as an overview of how events create places.

 

And for times when you need to let the mind roam, there's always:

 

 

 

[Vince1159]

Finally managed to start it...

 

The Last Fighting Tommy - Harry Patch with Richard Van Emden....

[stevehnz]

Finished "Borneo Boys", what a super read, many thanks to @perdu for bringing this to my attention in his 28 sqn Whirlwind thread, I've so enjoyed it.

Now started "A Savage Dreamland, Journeys in Burma" by Davis ⌛. Having read several WW2 books on Burma, a couple lately, & with a nephew who worked for an NGO in Coxs Bazaar in Bangladesh with Rohingya refugees, I figured it was time to update myself on the shenanigans in that turbulent land.

Steve.

[John_W]

Reading Philip Roths 2004 alternative history "The Plot Against America".

The premise is that Lindberg becomes President instead of Roosevelt and signs a non aggression pact with Germany to stay out of WW2.

Very well written and believable.

[Procopius]

I'm reading Theo Boiten's excellent Blenheim Strike, about RAF Blenheim operations, both fighter and bomber, over Europe from 1940-42. Apparently the Blenheim could out turn a 109 if the crew was sufficiently experienced, which I would never have guessed.

[Whofan]

Dylan goes electric, by Elijah Wald. 

 

The story of how Bob Dylan’s electric set at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 changed folk and rock music, and excited not a few boos at the show from purists.

 

The book also explores how “Dylan developed from his blues and folk roots, and how he reshaped popular music.”

 

Also on the bedside cabinet - Slough House by Mick Herron, Legacy of War by Wilbur Smith, and the October Airfix magazine.

Edited September 4, 2021 by Whofan

[Procopius]

Last night I read Alistair Panton's short memoir of his time flying Blenheims during the Battle of France, Six Weeks of Blenheim Summer, and found it very poignant. The Blenheim squadrons suffered terribly.

[Pete in Lincs]

20 hours ago, Procopius said:

The Blenheim squadrons suffered terribly.

The Battles too. Not to mention the lack of intelligence for the Hurricane squadrons*. The whole thing was a debacle from what I've read.

I sat in the sunshine this afternoon and finished off Bob Masons' Chickenhawk. (That's the fifth or sixth time)  It should be required reading.

Tonight I'll start Victor Boys, and I then have Vulcan boys sitting at dispersal as a follow up.

 

*Fighter Pilot, Paul Richey

[JamesP]

On 20/08/2021 at 22:11, cmatthewbacon said:

I would recommend Guy Gavriel Kay...

 

Crikey you've summoned a familiar name from the past there Matt. I had to look it up but I read The Summer Tree in my early teens (and probably the other books in the trilogy) - not sure if the books are somewhere, I think I must have been lent it or borrowed it from the library.

[Procopius]

Just finished Roy Conyers Nesbit's The Strike Wings, about the Beaufighter and Mosquito anti-shipping operations. The book was a very pleasant surprise. I had expected a rather one-sided, weakly researched account, but Nesbit (a WWII Beaufort navigator who turned to writing late in life) did an excellent job of combing through German records, and offers a very clear-eyed assessment of the Strike Wings' performance.

[593jones]

Just finished 'The Pathfinders' by Will Iredale, an excellent read.  I was particularly interested in the story of John McGown, an airman who served in the First World War, was shot down and taken prisoner, escaping twice.  He studied medicine and became the 8 Group Medical Officer.   He also flew 50 operational sorties as pilot or navigator and won his Pathfinder wings, altogether a remarkable character!  I was also surprised at the way Harris apparently attempted to undermine Bennett and the PFF, Iredale says Harris was not a fan of the PFF, encouraged his other group commanders to withhold their best crews and also encouraged the other groups to develop their own marking techniques and sideline the PFF.

[stevehnz]

Rainbows End by Lauren St John. Growing up on a farm in central Rhodesia as it was then before the end of the bush war & it becoming Zimbabwe.

After a recent thread about Johnny Plagis I looked into his post war life & more particularly his taking his own life supposedly. The Wikipedia article cited this book as a source for that, though Plagis had passed away long before the author was born. Early days but it reads well, I enjoy a good yarn about Africa as much as anything just about.

Steve.

[kiseca]

Just finished V2. I see a few posts from others a couple of pages back from others who have finished it as well, and, though it's the first Robert Harris book I have read, I echo the thoughts that it felt a bit light. I was surprised when I'd gotten to the last 60 - 70 pages and thinking that not much had happened yet. It felt in some ways like the story was still getting set up. Despite that, I did enjoy it though. Easy to read and an interesting enough story on a subject I knew absolutely nothing about. It was also a rather different perspective on Von Braun to what I had in my mind - not that I've researched him very much - but that added some interest for me too.

 

I also see someone is going through the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. That's arguably (yes I can argue with myself about it 😄) my favourite ever set of books, I can't decide if my all time favourites are the Guide, or Conn Iggulden's Conqueror series. I've read the Guides at least a half a dozen times and I just don't get tired of them.

 

Now I'm reading Ben Rich's Skunk Works, just started it, and I am re-reading the Expanse series, just started again on Leviathan Wakes. I've read books 1 to 8 and watched all the TV series at least twice, more times for the earlier seasons. I am a bit hooked on The Expanse

 

 

 

 

 

[Whofan]

Having read the bio of Steve Jobs recently - very interesting, a very complex character, very dismissive of Apple customers ( "Why do we want to do focus groups? peope don't know what they want until we tell them what they want" ) but with some childhood issues (he didn't know until quite late on that he had been adopted), I've gone for another mega bio, that of Margaret Thatcher by Charles Moore. The frst of three volumes weighs in a 758 pags, the 2nd at over 1,000 and I haven't dared see how many pages are in the 3rd volume!

 

Incidentally, the latest JK Galbraith Cormoran Strike book (Troubled Blood) is also over a thousand pages.

 

By contrast, the bio of Clement Attlee I have to read is a modest 400 pages long.

 

And I finished Slough House by Mick Herron, very good, and halfway through Legacy of War - written by a ghost writer with some plot input by Wilbur Smith - not too bad so far.

Edited September 18, 2021 by Whofan

[Procopius]

17 minutes ago, Whofan said:

By contrast, the bio of Clement Attlee I have to read is a modest 400pages long.

"A modest man" etc.

[Whofan]

2 hours ago, Procopius said:

"A modest man" etc.

Yes, indeed; and a most unintended reference by me!

Edited September 13, 2021 by Whofan

[GREG DESTEC]

Just finished "Lonely Boy" by Steve Jones, very honest and direct read, which I really enjoyed. I was never a Pistols fan back in the day but that didn't stop me appreciating the book. Only 99p on kindle totally worth it.

 

[Procopius]

Skua! by Peter C . Smith. The book is a triumph of almost contextless research. There's tons of information on the Skua gleaned painstakingly from the National Archives at Kew, but not much to put it in context. So we learn that the Skua didn't have a specialised divebombing sight, despite years of RAF-RN wrangling, but we never learn exactly what the sighting systems of its contemporaries were like. (Some cursory reading suggests both the the Aichi D3A1 and SBD Dauntless, for instance, used a telescopic sight, rather than a reflector sight as in a Skua (the Stuka also seems to have used its reflector gunsight), but we don't learn what the advantages or disadvantages of this system are, just the features that the Royal Navy wanted in their sight, and didn't get). Smith also goes out of his way to remind us at every opportunity that the RAF only wanted to area bomb cities before the war, which is presumably why they expended so much effort developing the Hector, Lysander, Battle, and Blenheim, all certified citybusters. 

 

Smith wants us to know that the Skua was always intended as a dive-bomber first, fleet fighter distant second, which is absolutely true, and expecting a lot of the Skua as a fleet fighter is as unfair as expecting the same of the SBD Dauntless (which was pressed into service as a very makeship CAP aircraft a few times), but the Skua, even as a dive bomber, was pretty inadequate. Not only was its payload half that of contemporary dive bombers, it was substantially slower than the SBD-1 Dauntless and the D3A Val (though a mite faster than the Stuka). 

 

One thing which really annoys me is that Smith (who really, really likes dive bombers) claims IJN divebombers had a hit rate of 88%. This is based off of IJN assessments of the bombing and sinking of HM Ships Dorsetshire and Cornwall in April 1942 in the Indian Ocean. But the Japanese estimated many more hits than were actually obtained, common to all militaries in wartime: the postwar USN Monograph 113, "Task Force Operations (November 1941-April 1942)", p.88 estimates 35 hits on Dorsetshire and 15 on Cornwall which presumably is where claims of "nearly 87 per cent" (Senshi Sōsho, xcv. 235, cited in Marder, Jacobsen, and Horsfield, Old Friends, New Enemies: The Royal Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy Vol 2, p.131) and "close to 90 percent" accuracy (Fuchida, Mitsuo, and Masatake Okumiya. Midway: The Battle That Doomed Japan, p.51) come from. Assuming there were only 53 aircraft in the strike, the actual percentage of hits was closer to 49% (16 hits on Cornwall, and 10 on Dorsetshire), based on testimony in ADM 1/12269, "HM Ships CORNWALL and DORSETSHIRE sunk by Japanese aircraft: awards to personnel." Not too shabby, but not amazing against two unescorted cruisers with inadequate HAA defences.

[Whofan]

We went to Paignton last week with the daughter, son in law and grandson, and while having got through 200 pages of the bio of Margaret Thatcher, I didn't want to take that to read in those few moments of peace we could get - so I took Witchfinder by Andrew Williams, a fictionalised account of the post Philby years when Peter Wright (under the influence of James Angleton) paralysed 5 and 6 looking for moles.

 

It was ok, with one scurrilous suggestion about Harold Wilson I'd not heard before, but frankly it went on a bit.

 

I also took for light relief Chris Ryan's latest, Zero 22, which if you've read any of his other novels, is a yarn that rattles along.

 

Back home now, so back to Maggie. After her will be The Silent deep, a book somewhat criticised here a while ago as I recall, but nonetheless I have an open mind on it.

[Potato Pete]

Just made a start on Arnhem by William Buckingham. Looks to be comprehensive account of Operation Market Garden. I've had a quick skim and whilst it seems to go into a lot of detail, he writes well and and you don't get bogged down. Plenty of clear maps (but none of them have scale bars - a personal bugbear). The only downside side is the small font and the lack of spacing between paragraphs make it look a bit overwhelming....

[stevehnz]

Mini Minor to Asia Minor by Nicky West. A 2011 trip from the UK down through Europe, across the Med & Nth Africa during the Arab Spring upheavals in a early Morris Mini. A fairly light & enjoyable read the first 1/3 anyway.

Reading on shows it didn't happen as planned Tunis & Libya were closed to them as was Syria so it involved shipping the mini to Egypt from Italy both ways, still an enjoyable read though.

Steve.

Edited October 2, 2021 by stevehnz
More info.

[Nigel Bunker]

I've just read the latest by Bernard Cornwell, Sharpe's Assassin. My favourite Napoleonic Wars soldier, Richard Sharpe is back after a break of 14 years. A cracking book, mine arrived yesterday at1pm and I was finished reading it by 7pm. Roll on the next one.

[John Tapsell]

Just re-reading The Heights of Courage by Avigdor Kahalani

 

It's a personal memoir of his experiences as an armoured battalion commander (Centurion tanks) on the Golan Heights in 1973. Highly recommended.

[593jones]

Just finished 'With British Snipers to the Reich', by Captain Clifford Shore, a book I've had on my shelves for a long time.  It's a very enjoyable read, Captain Shore was clearly an enthusiast about rifle shooting and sniping in particular.  Lots of anecdotes about sniping and sniper training, (Captain Shore was an instructor and ran a one-man sniping school just after the war on the island of Sylt.  He is surprisingly disparaging about other nations' sniping, including the Germans, saying there were very few actual snipers, and doesn't consider a soldier with a telescope sighted rifle is necessarily a sniper.   

 

Something that did surprise me was his enthusiasm for the M1 carbine.  I don't know too much about this weapon, and have never fired one, but from previous reading it is generally considered a poor weapon with an underpowered round.  Captain Shore wrote that he found it an excellent, accurate weapon, which would have made an ideal weapon for the second man in a sniper team. 

 

Writing his book very shortly after the Second World War, Captain Shore was expecting there would be organised resistance in Germany against the allies and argued the best way to combat this would be trained sniper teams.  An interesting scenario, which fortunately did not transpire.

 

A recommended read to anyone interested in the subject.

Edited October 1, 2021 by 593jones