In my reprisals paper abstract, I said that It is often argued that there was little enthusiasm in Britain for reprisals against German cities in retaliation for the Blitz, unlike the First World War. This is a historiographical claim. If I don’t want to be accused of using weasel words or attacking strawmen, it’s one
Michael Kerrigan. World War II Plans That Never Happened. London: Amber Books, 2011. That strange zone between what might have been and what was. Looks at various operational plans considered at some stage by one side or the other, usually getting as far as getting a codename — from Operation Stratford to Operation Downfall. Review
In 1935, the Emperor of Abyssinia, Haile Selassie, tried to buy the Airspeed Viceroy, an aeroplane which had been built to order for the London-Melbourne air race the year before. The Viceroy (above) was a one-off, customised version of Airspeed’s successful Envoy, a twin-engined civil transport which could carry six passengers in addition to its
Brian Farrell and Sandy Hunter, eds. A Great Betrayal? The Fall of Singapore Revisited. Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2010. A diverse collection of articles: strategy, historiography, oral history, operational history. Of particular interest is a contribution by John Ferris on British perceptions of Japanese airpower (includes Darth Vader bonus quote). A. L. Goodhart. What Acts
Today’s big story must have caused quite a bit of consternation to readers: it’s scarcely possible to credit it. Here is the full text of the statement issued by 10, Downing Street last night (as reproduced in The Times, 5):
Gerald Dickens. Bombing and Strategy: The Fallacy of Total War. London: Sampson Low, Marston, n.d. [1946?]. That’s Admiral Sir Gerald Dickens KCVO CB CMG to you and me, the grandson of Charles Dickens no less. An example of airpower scepticism. I had hoped that it was the 1941 edition, but the ‘n.d.’ turns out to
A recent post at Ptak Science Books alerted me to the existence of page 363 of the Illustrated London News for 6 September 1913. Not that I was surprised by this in general terms, but I was unaware of what was on it: an artist’s impression of a both a flying aircraft carrier — which
Keith Kyle. Suez: Britain’s End of Empire in the Middle East. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2011 [1993]. Suez was not the first time Britain ‘intervened’ in the Middle East, nor the last; but it was arguably the most disastrously misconceived intervention. A classic (and weighty) account.
I don’t usually do pathos for the sake of pathos, but while reading Juliet Gardiner’s The Blitz: The British Under Attack (London: Harper Press, 2010), 316, I came across an account of loss which I’ve read before, and which I still find as moving as I did the first time. The speaker is an elderly
Der Spiegel has a lengthy article based upon a new book by historians Sönke Neitzel and Harald Welzer called Soldaten (no English version yet, unfortunately). It’s based on the transcripts of secret recordings made of the conversations of German POWs captured by British and American forces in the Second World War. They would have talked
