Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/June 2019/Book reviews




 * By Nick-D

The Dambusters Raid is, as its title suggests, a history of Operation Chastise, the famous Royal Air Force attack on German dams in May 1943. It was first published in 1982, its author having interviewed many of the surviving participants during the 1970s. This updated edition was published in 2002.

This book provides a very detailed, and very convincing, account of the development of Operation Chastise and how it was conducted. Sweetman starts with an extensive (though in my view excessively detailed) account of the bureaucratic processes which led to the attack and its unique tactics being adopted. This includes an exhaustive account of the development of the "bouncing bomb", with what seems like every committee meeting in this process being described. I ended up skimming this material, but what stands out is that he demolishes the myth that the designer of the bomb, Barnes Wallis, struggled to gain official support -- instead, Sweetman describes the enthusiastic support and generous allocations of resources he received from senior decision makers from a very early stage of the project. Sweetman also makes it clear that the development of the bomb was a team effort, something Wallis stressed at the time and after the war. In short, the popular notion of Wallis being a "boffin" who developed the bouncing bomb single-handed while fighting official indifference finds no support here.

The Dambusters Raid picks up once readers get beyond the material on the development of the bouncing bomb. Sweetman provides a good summary of the formation of No. 617 Squadron RAF and the final preparations for the operation. The account of the raid itself is generally excellent, but let down by the eccentric placement of maps - in particular, an excellent map showing the route the bombers took and the locations of the dams is placed at the very end of the material on the raid! One of the areas of strength in the narrative is that Sweetman openly acknowledges that his sources are contradictory on certain details, and explains how he attempted to resolve these issues. The assessment of the results of the operation is somewhat less convincing, with it not being terribly clear what the long-term impact of the destruction of the dams was. Why the RAF did not attempt another operation using bouncing bombs is also never satisfactorily explained, though it is noted in passing that key decision makers thought, no doubt correctly, that the weapons would be much less effective once the advantage of surprise was lost.

Overall, this book is a good example of both a work focused on a specific air operation and the now almost ended genre of books on World War II informed by interviews with key figures.

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 * By Hawkeye7

Phillip Bradley is a "muddy boots" military historian who prefers to write about warfare from the perspective of the front line. He has previously written about the Battle of Wau, Salamaua–Lae campaign, and the Markham and Ramu Valley – Finisterre Range campaign. This one is largely about the landing at Lae and the landing at Nadzab. I say "largely", because there is some material about the earlier activities of commandos in the Lae area, which is largely a waste of space. Some of this book overlaps his earlier ones, and indeed seems like offcuts from them at times.

The larger the scope of the campaign, the bigger the forces involved, and the less amenable it is to this approach. Aspects such as strategy, training, tactics and logistics are touched upon, but only occasionally, and are not developed, so a reader unfamiliar with the course of the campaign will be none the wiser. The book concludes with a fine operational analysis, but this is the first time that the reader is treated to one. Even the treatment of the fighting is uneven, with some events told in great detail and others passed over completely; a more even treatment would no doubt be very long.

On the credit side of the ledger, the book is an easy read. (I read it all on an airplane flight in one sitting.) It also contains some first rate research, such as details about the attacks on LCTs and LSTs. There is a commendable effort to tell the story from the Japanese point of view, which is always difficult on account of the language barrier and the extremely high casualty rate. Bradley makes a lot of use of prisoner of war interrogations compiled by Allied intelligence. This is very moving at times.

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 * By Hawkeye7

Myth-busting is a favourite sport of historians, and military history has its fair share. If you find duelling with Randy in Boise a buzz, you've come to the right place in Wikipedia. (The adrenaline addicts hang out at the Fringe theories/Noticeboard.)

This book is more than just a detailed rebuttal of a few myths and half truths, although there is plenty of that. Nor does Dapin just go after easy targets like Paul Ham; he notes some errors propagated by distinguished historians like Jeffrey Grey, his own beloved PhD supervisor (and mine), and even (with apologies) by himself.

Some of the myths are very much fringe. Politician Tim Fischer maintains that military astrologers added extra balls to the draft lottery barrel (wherein each ball represented a birth date) in order to increase the numbers of men with required skills (like himself, a farmer). (Drapin notes that due to the provision of deferments so men could complete their apprenticeships and university courses, the national servicemen became noticeably older and better educated as the war in Vietnam went on.)

The scope of this book goes far beyond the Vietnam War and busting myths (such as the one that returning veterans did not get welcome home parades). The core of the book probes the workings and the value of oral history. People are apt to recall events incompletely, incorrectly or anachronistically, or even recall events that never happened at all. Too often, Drapin notes, the recollections of participants are recorded uncritically and without cross-checking. For those who have to work with oral history, the key lessons he draws are that the earliest recollections are the best, as memories become embellished over time, and that recollections must be vigorously fact checked.

The workings of cognitive dissonance mean that people put the best possible face on the actions. Thus, someone who refused to register for the draft is likely to claim that this was a principled stand rather than through fear of being sent to Vietnam and killed. Similarly, a national serviceman is likely to take the position that he went to Vietnam as a volunteer out of principle, and not because he was compelled to. This is not just rationalisation; it is actually the mental process by which the most sincere beliefs are formed in the mind. As a consequence, it is almost impossible to ascribe motivations to anyone's behaviour, even your own.

The book details how myths have been generated, and incorporated into a mis-remembered and unhistorical societal narrative of the war that has even made its way into textbooks, and how, like the Angels of Mons, fictional stories have been taken as fact. There is a political aspect to this accepted narrative, as it tends to let the conservative politicians off the hook. There are also some lessons that the Army and the politicians might take note of: conscription made the war more rather than less popular. This book is recommended for anyone with an interest in the art of history.

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 * By Hawkeye7

I attended a public lecture in Canberra by the author (whose previous work was about the construction of an android), and bought a signed copy of this book. By now, everybody is probably aware of the part that code-breaking played in the war. The story of code-breaking in the South West Pacific Area, where work was carried out in conjunction with that at Bletchley Park in England and Arlington Hall in the United States, has been recounted before in various places; the best is probably MacArthur's Ultra (1992) by Edward J. Drea. Many accounts have concentrated on the organisation of code-breaking effort, which was somewhat messy, but an impressive instance of Australian-US collaboration (although US Army-US Navy collaboration was often lacking). This book concentrates more on the personalities involved, and the work that they did. The Central Bureau gave General MacArthur an independent source of high-grade intelligence within his own command.

In the nature of the subject, new details have been coming out even as the number living participants has been dwindling, and Dufty has indeed made several new discoveries. While obviously written for the general reader and not the scholar, the book also delves into the technical details of how messages were encrypted and enciphered. (Starting with the difference between the two.) The way the Japanese used their codes is clearly documented. The descriptions of the activities of the Y-stations is also very good. This is often overlooked in many accounts. Radio traffic was more important in the Pacific than in Europe (because land lines were lacking) and divisions could be tracked, and useful information gathered, even if their messages could not be read.

Ultra could not provide all the answers, and it frequently under-estimated the numbers of Japanese defenders, with serious results. Moreover, the Australian government had been penetrated by Soviet agents, and the information they obtained was passed to the Japanese. The reasons why remain uncertain.

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