Current Reading: March 2023

Just finished Winning and Losing on the Western Front, which turned out to be a very readable examination of what the factors of operational victory were for the British in 1918. Short version: The British ruthlessly used every factor of victory available to them, whereas the Germans played a weak hand badly; Ludendorff does not look very impressive in the end.

>1 Shrike58: Thanks for the mention, I've put it on my wishlists.

Read The Modern Cruiser: The Evolution of the Ships that Fought the Second World War by Robert C. Stern. A very technical work, but well done.

Finished The Death of the USS Thresher, Norman Polmar, an informative survey of the events in the brief life of the USS Thresher. My deeper appreciation goes to the coverage of the history of submarine losses, deep sea submersibles and sea rescue, which put the loss of the USS Thresher into historical context (hint: it's not a one-off).

Also: I'm attempting to revive the dead group "Submarines", should anyone else be interested. It runs a little quiet over there ;)

But there's a long thread from 10y ago that has a lot of interesting titles listed (and libraries linked to it for perusal). https://www.librarything.com/ngroups/4773/Submarines

Recently finished my re-read of An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942–1943. Great book, sufficient detail, but not too much.

Finished Coalition Strategy and the End of the First World War. While kind of dry, it's a deep dive into how the Allies of WWI actually conducted business; almost as much international relations as military history.

Wrapped up Chobham Armour, which provides an over-arching review of the products of Britain's official AFV development center. Dry, but comprehensive.

Finished Valkyrie: North American's Mach 3 Superbomber, a book that I've hoarded forever. The suspicion one is left with, after working through this monograph, is that this plane never really made operational sense, even though it was a fantastic technological achievement.

>7 Shrike58: I have this and a number of other Dennis Jenkins' books. I guess I'm rather a tech geek in this regard. I worked with Dennis on the Space Shuttle program, although we were in different departments. I really enjoy his books, I just wish they weren't so expensive.

Finished Sassanian Armies on Tuesday. It’s an Osprey-style book, whose chief virtue are the illustrations, both line drawings if monuments and artefacts and colour reconstructions.

>8 jztemple: Yeah...and quality aviation books don't seem to be getting cheaper!