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WWII Book Review

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Helen:
Hello fellow adventurers. I was asked if I could start a new sticky with the above title.

So we can get the ball rolling so to speak we need to have a few guidelines.

Books that are reviewed must have mainly WWII content or be strongly related to WWII in a way that it would benefit the readers of this sub-section.

Wierd War II and What If stuff have its own section on the forum.

Books that are furthering revisionism or the like are not allowed. Moreover, books with a political content and in a WWII historical context are allowed.

Examples of interesting books that would be allowed: Uniform literature, Armoured Battles of WWII, Osprey series, WWII Battle Sites of Europa, Spanish Voulenteers on the Eastern Front, Historical OOB's etc.

Please remember if posting pictures you must insure you follow the guidlines set out in the use of symbols:

http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=9125.0

I hope you will find this thread informative as reviews are submitted for comment.

Cheers,

Helen

Anatoli:
Great idea  :)

Jim French:
Okay.  A quick review of Gordon Rottman's US Combat Engineer in Osprey's Warrior Series.
As a WWII gamer, I found Rottman's book to be an excellent source on the organization, equipment, and capabilities of the WWII US combat engineer.
Our group recently ran a NWE game and deployed two US engineer squads.  They were not organized as they shiould have been, but now with the new information they will be.
We found the list of MOSes and the different sets of equipment for Construction and demolition most useful for future planning. 

Arrigo:
Very quick review of a book I recently read.

Attack on Pearl Harbor by Alan D. Zimm

The author is a former Operational Researcher for the US Navy the attack is dissected in planning, execution, objective and evaluation. Lot of wargaming stuff like damage modelling, attack procedures and hit percentage. He also discuss japanese wargaming prior to the operation and his points have much more sense than Fuchida and Prange (and he completes Parshall and Tully exposure of Fuchida the liar...).

He made interesting comment about selection of targets (BBs were the main objective Carriers were just an after tought), lack of proficency by Japanese pilots and lot of problem in the entire operation. Also defective and wrong japanese loads (Egusa's 16 Val wasted their non armor piercing bombs on the Nevada, several torpedo planes fixated on the target  ship Utah).

All in all a very interesting reading and a perfect primer to WW2 naval combat for the wargamer.


Note: as an historian I would call it "revisionist" because he challenge several accepted "truth" about pearl harbor, but every new historical research is a revision of previous knowledge. I fear a certain british author has tainted the term as can we, please please, switch from "revisionist" (itself a neutral term) to a better definition of what cannot be posted? 

Keith:
I'll start with one of my absolute favourites.

'With The Scots' - A Soldiers Struggle For Europe 1944-45. Peter White.

A vivid and graphic account written by an officer at the sharp end of the KOSB actions, from the battle for Walcheren right through to the bitter end at Bremen. Very readable, full of detail, sad, gripping and very worthwhile. Lots of details of the actions and people involved.

The original manuscript was apparently hidden away for 50 years.

Highly recommended. A book that I come back to often.

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