Angus Konstam, Warships at Dunkirk 1940 (Osprey, 2026)
The myth of the fleet of wee boats that saved an army at Dunkirk in May 1940 has lingered in certain quarters. In this book in Osprey’s New Vanguard series, the prolific Angus Konstam does not denigrate the efforts of those boats but places the proper emphasis on the Royal Navy and French Navy in the evacuation labelled as Operation Dynamo.
Konstam begins with the narrative of events that created the Dunkirk pocket and the efforts to extract the troops. Gathering a suitable fleet was a remarkable achievement in itself, sending them across the English Channel into the teeth of a luftwaffe storm of bullets and bombs even more so. Such was the relentlessness of the German air assault, supported by MTBs, submarines, and mines, that daylight operations gave way to nighttime actions. Nevertheless, the Allied navies rescued nearly 400,000 soldiers, though not without some tragic losses at sea. Konstam adds some hair-raising accounts from those who sailed along with the specifications of the various ships involved. There are also many photographs and illustrations that illuminate the text.
This is a solid, though slim, survey of the ships involved in Operation Dynamo. Konstam does a creditable job in boiling down a lot of information from a complex operation into a tidy narrative and useful sections on the ships and their specifications. His inclusion of survivor accounts adds an interesting human touch. Military and naval history students will appreciate Konstam’s book.
