What Are You Reading?

I liked that one.

My current read is "Stopped at Stalingrad" by Hayward.

Then a re-read of "On the Banks of the Suez".

 

Im in a big muddle, Ive started reading Allenbrookes diaries again....In my view the best personal account of the main events of ww2 ever written...and them Im getting myself all messed up by comparing certain events, words and actions with Churchills own 6 volume memoirs, then really confusing the hell out of me by comapring them to The Struggle for Europe, Im not even going to bother looking at Ike or anyone elses versions, after reading the intrigue on Italy and Agean islands Im giving up and having some well deserved headache tablets, besides the wife cant clean around all the books on the floor anymore...

 

Visiting another town and had time to check the local second-hand bookshops.

"With Geronimo across Europe" by Edward O´Brien

A dramatic and humorous account of a paratrooper medic in the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment during WWII.

Paid 10€

Wolf-dietrich Heike: Ukrainian division Galicia 1943-45

Paid 7€

Not bad, I think!

 

Just now reading 'Fletcher's Gang - A B-17 Crew Over Europe'. Never published in the UK - got it on e-bay for £7.50.

 

Last Victory in Russia: The SS-Panzerkorps and Manstein's Kharkov Counteroffensive February - March 1943, by George M. Nipe, Jr., Schiffer Publishing. ISBN 0764311867

Oops- This is one massive book but after reading this I guess I should know everything I need to know...

 

I am also reading flyboys. Good book. I am enjoying it.

 

i just got done with reading about all of the good WW2 spy books, and i recently finished band of brothers (go figure i have seen the movie at least 10 time, haha) i went to the spy museum in washington D.C. and bought Secret Channel To Berlin The Masson-Schellenberg connection by PierreTh Braunschweig A GREAT BOOK! very very informative it is about swiss Intel durng ww2. although the swiss were neutral, they had a fascinating intelligence branch...

 

Fred Majdalany: Cassino - Portrait of a Battle

Some war fiction but got it cheap so had to buy it for some Xmas reading...: Jim Thorn: Mustang Summer ( anybody read this one?)

 

Have not read it but sounds interesting.

Mustang Summer
An Epic Tale Of The European Air War At Its Height

"I rolled inverted and pulled down hard, my breathing barely keeping pace with my heartbeat as the force of gravity increased. Drury was just ahead and I was again playing the dutiful wingman. I caught a glimpse of Johnny Hart well ahead and to my right with Brent locked onto him like hot cheese to toast. He slid into place between two of the 190s and fired. His tracer arcing towards them, around them, but not apparently hitting anything. They broke hard right and the two Mustangs followed, tightening the turn in the process.

The Germans dived and Hart was onto them, fired and one smoked, flamed and exploded in what seemed like a second, his wingman splitting and disappearing into the cloud below."

From The Author of Falklands 2 . . . Jim Thorn

For the US Army Air Force the advent of the Merlin engined P-51 Mustang fighter in World War 2 ushered in a new equation to the intensity and success of the up until then precarious daylight bombing missions over Nazi Europe. For the first time ever the long suffering bomber crews now knew that they had their "Little Friends" flying protective escort close by, even to targets as far away as Berlin, Dresden and Munich.

With great sincerity though obvious sarcasm the bomber crews would claim they already had escort all the way to the target and back. "Sure as hell we have plenty of escort. The Thunderbolts and Lightnings take us to the German border then the 190s and Messerschmitts are with us the rest of the way!"

A sick joke to some but not to the thousands of young men who manned the bombers, the majority of whom would never live to see home again. The Mustang changed all that in one fell swoop, flying missions the Luftwaffe hierarchy previously could not even envisage as being remotely possible.

The P-51 Mustang and its effect upon the daylight bombing missions of the US Eighth Air Force, as described by one young pilot, is what this dramatic story is about, nothing more, nothing less. By the author of Falklands 2, this extensively researched novel portrays the challenges, fears and hopes of the era in stark human detail. Fiction that is closer to fact.

http://www.ausaviation.com.au/books/book.php?bid=14&cat=all

 

Just finished The Forth at War by William F. Hendrie, which relates the story of the Firth of Forth in both world wars.
Not only does it have great atmospheric pics of naval vessels sailing seaward under the Forth rail bridge, but there are details and pics of the fortifications on the various islands, and some superbly camouflaged pillboxes in Edinburgh's Princes Street which are long gone. Less famous places on both banks haven't been forgotten though; some good pics of gunsites and also the construction of Rosyth naval dockyard, AND the German High Seas Fleet arriving at the latter in November 1918 before heading north to Scapa. The publishers (Birlinn in Edinburgh) have other titles in the series dealing with the Clyde, and also Dundee.
The Forth at War is a good book, and I only hope the others are done to the same standards.

 

Just started "Brotherhood of Heroes: The Marines at Pelieu".

 

I was lucky enough to recieve this as a gift for Christmas along with an author signed copy of Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway. Looking forward to reading both in the very near future.

 

Long Reach 8th Fighter command

Ok, Osprey, but this includes 24 first-hand accounts how to survive during the missions and the original booklet was given to new pilots.

-------------

In the detailed document entitled 'The Long Reach, ' 24 pilots who had seen extensive action escorting B-17s and B-24s on daylight raids deep into Germany candidly discussed their secrets to success -- and survival -- in the deadly skies over occupied Europe. The report was used as a text on combat flying for fighter pilots in training.

http://www.ospreypublishing.com/title_detail.php/title=P9077~ser=ACE

 

Civil Defence by TH O'Brien, one of the UK Official History of the Second World War Civil Series. He relates the story of ARP etc from WW1 stumblings to the highly-organised force it had become by 1940. On the way he relates the many problems in manpower, equipment and civil service apathy etc that had to be overcome.
As well as a wealth of information on the Blitz generally, the book goes into great detail on the organisational charts of the ARP, National Fire Service and Police. Superb reading, but an incredibly rare book.

 

Paul Lawrence Rose
Heisenberg and the Nazi Atomic Bomb Project, 1939-1945

http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/8006.html

 

The latest couple on my desk are:

Harris J P Men, Ideas and Tanks: British Military Thought and Armoured Forces, 1903 - 1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995)

House J Combined Arms Warfare in the Twentieth Century (Lawrence, Kansas: Kansas University Press, 2001)

Both really good books.

Ross

 

I read a lot of ospreys campaign series a bit costly but the lay out is great gives you a good over view of the subject matter I am looking forward to the release of Iraq 1941 sounds interesting. At the moment I am reading-

THE WINTER WAR
The Russo-Finnish War of 1939-40
By William R. Trotter


Richard

 

Just read "soldat" by Siefried Knapp. Pretty good book on an officer as he rose through the officer corps ending as a major on the general staff of General Weidling. Describe's his ordeal in prison. Good reading and interesting format. More like a movie.

 

Just Finished reading one got nine more on the go anyway this one deals with the out right evil side of the Nazis

Masters of Death
The SS Einsatzgruppen and the
Invention of The Holocaust
By Richard Rhodes

Granted this not light reading and the content is going to be graphic a very interesting account from 1939-1943 one thing stood out for me was on the eve of Operation Barbarossa the army was only one third motorised unlike the Einsatzgruppen who were fully motorised just goes to show the real war was against the Jews.

 

Also it seems the Einsatzgruppen men were given rather high ranks to start with in order to be able to do their jobs.