Just Finished Reading: Operation Biting – The 1942 Parachute Assault to Capture Hitler's Radar by Max Hastings (FP: 2024) [268pp] 

By the end of 1941 with the Battle of Britain won and the threat of invasion consigned to history Britain was looking for ways to strike back at the Axis Powers in Europe. Bomber Command was doing what it could with the aircraft it had available, but more needed to be done - especially as bomber losses, even at night, were increasing. Partially informed by a mixture of pride and arrogance it was long, too long, believed that either Germany did not use RADAR or that their technology was primitive in comparison to the British achievement. But the growing air losses, electronic signals from the Continent, ENIGMA traffic and strange reconnaissance photographs suggested otherwise. One location in particular intrigued the British war planners. It was an isolated facility in Normandy near the village of Bruneval. It looked ideal for an assault from the air, something the British armed forces had never tried before. On hearing of the idea Churchill, always up for an example of exotic warfare, agreed that it should be planned and executed as soon as possible, not only to show to the public that the British bulldog still had teeth but also to show the Americans that Britain was still very much in the fight. 

I'd heard of the famous Bruneval raid before but had never read anything much about it before. I think the thing that surprised me more than anything else reading this excellent study of the event was how much planning went into it and just how many people were involved. It was an early example of true combined arms warfare involving ground troops being dropped from the air – in hastily modified and totally unsuitable obsolete bombers - who fought a ground action and were later picked up by Naval forces from the French beach. Of course, being the first time anything like this had been attempted (and despite extensive if patchy training) the co-ordination between Services was... less than stellar. Not only were some of the paratroopers dropped FAR from their landing zones (a glider assault would have been a much better idea, but not suitable gliders had yet been built and tested) but the Navy failed to pick up any of the troop's signals when they needed rescue until some hours had passed. Only a fair amount of luck and a very lacklustre response from the local German forces prevented the operation becoming a failure. 

Unfortunately, despite the ultimate success of the mission, many of the wrong lessons had been learnt and, rather inevitably, a number of significantly upscaled missions followed – notably the attacks on Saint-Nazaire and catastrophically the assault on Dieppe [more on both missions later] provided little in the way of positive results but did result in very heavy casualties on the Allied side. The disaster of Dieppe did, fortunately, have an upside as it prompted the Allies to plan the later invasion of 'fortress Europe' to a much greater degree and provide it with overwhelming force to achieve its aims. This was a small unit action that has largely faded into the background of larger actions in WW2 which is a shame. Full of 'interesting' and 'exotic' characters in the British Special Forces (again something very new at the time) this was a valuable look at an operation that influenced many aspects of fighting later in the war. Definitely worth a read if this is in your scope of interest. Much more from the author to come. 

Just Finished Reading: The Last Sunrise by Robert Ryan (FP: 2006) [303pp] 

Singapore, 1948. Lee Crane was finally leaving South-East Asia before it killed him. He'd been offered a job flying cargo into a besieged Berlin and jumped at it. He even entertained the possibility that a certain girl would be there despite her not returning his letters. But fate, it seems, had other ideas along with echoes from his past. He knew what was coming long before Elsa punched him, throwing her entire weight behind it, in front of everyone. He knew that his ex-copilot would show up eventually and that they would use the memory of Kitten to manipulate him to fly somewhere for something illegal that might get them all killed. It was only a matter of time before he was looking down at the jungle again wondering if the airstrip could handle his arrival or whether he had enough fuel to make it over the mountains. Maybe, just maybe, he'd actually get out and leave the god forsaken place. Maybe... 

Although I've had a few books by this author for a while now this is my first time with him. I'm sorry that I waited so long. Overall this reminded me of the thrillers I read in the 70's with characters down on their luck, hoping to make a quick buck and who are still trying to live with the consequences of previous incidents (often war related) that were left hanging and unresolved but still ate away at them. All the elements were there: Lee is a cynical cargo pilot who had ALL of his innocence kicked out of him during the war in Asia first with the Flying Tigers and then as a cargo pilot flying cargo over 'The Hump' for the Nationalist Chinese. Then we have Else, the femme fatal of the piece (I liked her!) who could throw a mean punch and seduce just about anyone. There was even a love story, well told for once, with the mature and somewhat mysterious Kitten who was the focus of the green and very young Lee as he both found his feet and his wings in wartime. The story – full of crosses, double and triple –crosses – friends, enemies, sudden death, espionage, self-dealing and betrayal – was both complex and highly satisfying. The narrative moved at a steady pace and there wasn't a single moment when I found myself even slightly nudged out of the story. It was a good, solid thriller with more than a few nice moments and some great, very well drawn, characters. The only 'slight' niggle I had was with the number of cliff-hangers (some literal) which I thought was somewhat more than necessary. Whilst there's nothing TOO flashy here and the novel didn't exactly knock me on my heels it was still a very entertaining read and I'm looking forward to his other works Recommended. 

Just Finished Reading: Chickenhawk by Robert Mason (FP: 1983) [399pp] 

Robert Mason wanted to fly for as long as he could remember. Gaining his civilian pilot's licence as soon as he could he still wasn’t satisfied. He wanted to fly helicopters but the only way he could afford that was to be trained by the Army, so he joined up. Despite the worsening situation in SE Asia, he never expected to be sent to Vietnam. That, among other things, just showed his lack of understanding about the world. Within weeks of getting his helicopter pilot's licence he was on his way overseas with a new type of combat unit – the 1st Air Cavalry. For the next 12 months, from August 1965 to July 1966, he would fly over 1,000 combat missions delivering troops into hot LZs (Landing Zones), returning later to pick up the survivors, the wounded and the dead, he would deliver ammunition, food and other supplies to artillery units on lonely hilltops, and he would fly top brass and reporters across the jungle to ‘assess how things were going’. Apart from being an effective member of his squadron and not letting the guys down he had only one driving ambition – to survive his tour (despite everything) and return home to his wife and child. He did (no spoiler here as he wrote this book!) but as a changed man plagued by nightmares and increasing addicted to alcohol and drugs. 

This was a mistake. I had thought, going in, that this was a novel so I could add another Vietnam entry into my fictional world tour. The book turned out to be, however, a personal account of the authors experiences as part of an experimental tactical unit expected to win the war in Vietnam in a matter of months. This was, in many ways, an impressive work. Not only did the author (not a professional writer in any way) convey the reality of modern warfare – the chaos and incompetence at all levels was honestly shocking – but did so in such a way that you could almost imagine sitting in that helicopter with him throughout the narrative. No doubt he pulled his punches from time to time to reduce the grimness of the tale, but what he did end up conveying was bad enough.  

The new ‘Air Cav’ system was expected to be a true war winner. Afterall, the most powerful military in the world was fighting (if you could use that word) a bunch of guys in sandals carried AK-47s, right? How could they possibly lose? Yet much to the surprise of the top brass (although quickly understood by the men on point) not only did the Vietcong not quickly go down to defeat and despondency they not only fought back but fought back effectively – and the US military had little response except more and more troops and more and more firepower. Looking at it with 60 years of hindsight it's easier to see why they failed. Firstly, it was all (effectively) new to the Americans despite their experiences in WW2. On top of that they were trying out, with great hopes, their new lethal toys against a supposedly primitive enemy. Their (actually warranted) arrogance wouldn’t allow them to see problems before they arose or solutions once the problems morphed into an intractable mire. The author related a simple but significant fact – before flying into his first combat zone he, and other pilots and gunners, were promised body armour. This finally arrived SEVEN months into a twelve-month deployment. Apart from logistical incompetence the reason I think this happened was because no one believed that they’d still be involved in the war for 6 months, never mind in excess of 16 YEARS. This level of over confidence (or arrogance) resulted in a lot of unnecessary deaths on all sides.  

I’d read a bit about this war before, watched movies and documentaries and actually remember watching it on the nightly news growing up, but this account was a real eye-opener to the reality on the ground. If you want to be exposed to how things where ‘in country’ from a first-hand perspective this is a very good place to start. Definitely recommended and more from this combat zone to come. 

[Highest page count of the year so far: 399pp][+17pp]

The SIZE difference between a B-29 and a B-36 is AMAZING!

Just Finished Reading: The Sea Witch by Stephen Coonts (FP: 2012) [253pp] 

This was a collection of three short novellas by an author I used to read a lot of pre-Blog. The first story was the titled ‘Sea Witch’ (1999) which revolved around an American ‘jinx’ fighter-bomber pilot early in the Pacific War being assigned to be co-pilot in a PBY Catalina (one of my all-time favourite aircraft) after the original and well-respected co-pilot had been killed. There followed the usual trying to fit in trope and it was obvious from the start that the ‘jinx’ would end up saving the day. This he did – but not in the way I’d expected. An above average story overall. 

Next up was ‘The 17th Day’ (2003) which told the tale of an American pilot in the Royal Flying Corps on the Western Front. The pilot's pre-occupation was, as you might expect, survival especially as it's his 17th day in service which is the average life-expectancy of a fighter pilot in that theatre. The question is: will he make it through the day. Despite being a well-constructed story, it didn’t have a lot of tension (can you really imagine the main character dying part way through and the officers in his squadron shrugging their shoulders and saying “Well, them’s the odds.....”. The flying scenes were well handled although, depending on how my memory is, I did think he stole a real incident for his fictional lead to add a bit of addition danger/threat. Still, it was reasonably entertaining. 

By FAR the worst story was the last - ‘Al-Jihad’ (2001). This was a frankly ridiculous story of a retired marine sniper being hired to assist a navy brat whose parents had been killed by Libyan terrorists by blowing up the airline they’d been travelling on. The plot, if you can call it that, was incredibly muddled and barely made sense. Even I could see ten other (and better) ways of eliminating the targets and that’s without getting into the area of extra-judicial killing. The conclusion was a nonsensical cherry-on-top and honestly made me laugh out loud at the stupidity of it all. I can only imagine that the author’s publisher asked him for a quick terrorist related story, and he passed on the task to his teenage son, then made a minimal effort of ‘clean it up’ and put his stamp on it. Terrible. 

This had been (as so often is the case) sitting in a pile of books for YEARS and I decided to finally ‘get around’ to it now. I might have tossed it if the story order had been reversed but that didn’t happen. Reasonable overall but not recommended even for the hard-core thriller reader. I’m SURE that there’s MUCH better stuff out there!