by RNS | Dec 25, 2020 | Beating Tsundoku
Mark Stille, Malaya & Dutch East Indies 1941-42 (Osprey, 2020)
In Malaya & Dutch East Indies 1941-42, Mark Stille presents a cogent guide to the Japanese attacks on British and Dutch possessions in southeast Asia during World War II. His focus is on the air war but puts that into context with land and naval operations. The result is a satisfying read with enough technical information to keep the ‘airheads’ happy.
Before Stille begins his narrative and analysis, he provides a brief but handy chronology of the campaigns – they are brief because this was one-way traffic. As with all good campaign books, Stille surveys the respective strengths of the combatants, starting with Japanese air power. He discusses organization and tactics for the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Force and Imperial Japanese Army Air Force, and he notes that the two held no common doctrine or operational skills: they were in effect two separate air forces in a common cause. Their warplanes were not that great either, especially the bombers, but then Stille comes to their opposition, mainly Dutch and British, which was wholly inadequate in quantity and quality and manned by inexperienced crews – Stille barely has a good word to say about them, and rightly so. The United States Army Air Force was also deployed but lacked numbers and logistical support, despite having the best Allied fighter in the P-40.
Stille embarks on a narrative of the Japanese campaign plans, first with Malay then the Netherlands East Indies, countered by Britain and the Dutch defensive set-ups. He finds the latter incoherent and inadequate. As for the campaign, which is described next, the Japanese quickly established air superiority, and any hopes of British naval support all but collapsed with the sinking of the HMS Repulse and HMS Prince of Wales battleships (Force Z). Japanese successes on the ground allowed them to leapfrog their airfields, thus maintaining their aerial pressure. The Allies attempted to fight back, with some small success, but they were overwhelmed, particularly on their poorly defended airfields. After four months, the Japanese victory was total: numbers and better aircraft and crews paid off in the end. Stille demonstrates that the bravery shown by the Allied pilots was simply not enough.
As with all Osprey Campaign books, Malaya & Dutch East Indies 1941-42 is a basic but high quality guide to the subject. Stille’s text is lucid with clutter-free narrative and analysis, and he is ably supported by a wide range of black and white photographs, colour plates, and maps. He expresses an unmistakeable disdain for Allied preparations and efforts without denigrating the men involved in the combat, while clearly establishing why the Japanese won even with a fleet of mostly average warplanes. This is a solid effort and will be useful to anyone interested in the early Pacific War.
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by RNS | Dec 23, 2020 | Beating Tsundoku
Timothy Venning, Cromwell’s Failed State and the Monarchy (Pen & Sword, 2020)
In Cromwell’s Failed State and the Monarchy, Timothy Venning discusses the post-war period from 1646 to 1655. It is a detailed rollercoaster ride of war and politics, and one not for the casual reader.
Venning launches into his book with an overview of possible outcomes to the Civil War, all of which had their problems. Given all the factions and personalities involved, that was hardly surprising. At the centre of all this was what to do with the obstinate Charles I. When he tried to reignite the fires of civil war, his fate was sealed in most quarters. Venning covers Charles’ contentious trial and execution in 1649, before moving into a Republic with decidedly shaky foundations. The complex political game continued after Charles’ execution. Charles II entered the picture, casting his shadow across all the major events in the 1650s, while Cromwell’s seemingly inexorable rise continued. He campaigned in Ireland and Scotland, but his greatest potential threat came from the Royalist invasion of 1651, though he quashed that with apparent ease. That left the Commonwealth in the clear, or so it seemed. Politics remained fractious at best and war with the Dutch did not help; Cromwell’s patience snapped on 20 April 1653 and he instigated a coup. What to do after that was the problem. The Nominated Parliament followed but was not successful. Venning leaves us with Cromwell as a King in all but name.
As a reading experience, Cromwell’s Failed State and the Monarchy is hard work, like joining a conversation with strangers half-way through. Venning goes straight into the weeds from the first page, and what follows is a seemingly endless list of questions and telegraphing sub-headings that create a sometimes disorienting stop-start effect. There are some good, flowing passages, in particular Cromwell’s operations in Ireland and Scotland, and Venning knows his material, which is fine for those already steeped in this period. This is therefore not a book for beginners or casual readers, but civil war era enthusiasts will find it useful.
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by RNS | Dec 18, 2020 | Beating Tsundoku
Michael E. A. Ford, Hunting the Last Great Pirate (Pen & Sword, 2020)
By 1827, the heyday of the pirates was long over, but piracy continued, and this new breed were every bit as dangerous as their predecessors. Enter Benito de Soto, a career pirate who attacked the British ship, the Morning Star, off the coast of Africa, killed some of its crew and took its treasure. The British hunted him down, capturing de Soto in Gibraltar, before trying and executing him. In Hunting the Last Great Pirate, Michael Ford narrates this fascinating story.
Benito de Soto was a particularly vicious pirate even for that profession. An advocate of the dead-men-tell-no-tales approach to piracy, his cruelty was limited only by opportunity. In 1827, he encountered the sluggish British merchant ship, Morning Star, near Ascension Island. After plundering it, he thought he had sunk the ship with all hands, but he was wrong. The Morning Star limped back to London, setting off a howl of protests over piracy and lack of naval protection. A convoluted series of events led to De Soto being arrested at Gibraltar in July 1828. His trial proved problematic, however, because there was little available evidence of his piracy. He therefore languished in prison until a trial could be rigged against him by the British government. De Soto was executed in January 1830. In his epilogue, Ford reveals that evidence uncovered many years after the events determined de Soto’s guilt beyond doubt, but that Spanish cooperation at the time could have made the prosecution case far safer without the need for government machinations.
That basic outline underplays Ford’s skilful weaving of a compelling multifaceted story, involving not just the base piracy at its heart, but corruption and complicity running through the British and Spanish governments. Ford deploys multiple sources gleaned from careful research to bolster his well-written account. Moreover, his novelistic approach heightens the tension in the story and avoids becoming bogged down in some of the drier aspects of the wider context. Ford’s book is a useful addition to the history of piracy and will appeal to students of early 19th century international relations and historical criminology. It is also a very good read.
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by RNS | Dec 16, 2020 | Beating Tsundoku
Martin R. Howard, Wellington and the British Army’s Indian Campaigns 1798-1805 (Pen & Sword, 2020)
In this detailed work, Martin R. Howard attempts to bridge a gap in the literature of the British campaigns in India during the Napoleonic period. Previous works focus on Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington, and his actions, but Howard finds there was much more to the wars in India than that.
Howard splits his book into three sections. The first surveys the British Army in India and its enemies. The British fielded a polyglot force of Europeans, Natives, and British soldiers with the East India Company troops added to the mix. They faced two main enemies; Tipu Sultan of Mysore and the Maratha princes. Tipu had tens of thousands under his command in a well-organised army, but one that suffered from poor morale. The Maratha princes could field a decent sized army too, but they were riven by command infighting. Howard notes that the British also had to face smaller, irregular forces from time to time.
The second part examines the significant campaigns. Some of these are more familiar than others, such as the Mysore campaign of 1799 and the campaign leading to the Battle of Asaye in 1803. General Lake’s campaigns against the Maratha princes in 1803 is less well known. Howard describes these campaigns in detail with orders of battle and well laid out maps. Howard’s third section is on the soldiers’ experience of India. Howard describes the men’s reactions to the voyage and arriving in India, the heat, the stinging and biting wildlife, their encounters with the locals, mundane garrison life and the shock and violence of battle, the peculiar soldier’s life of the native sepoy, and the important medical support the army needed. Howard concludes with eight appendices, providing additional information that did not make it into his chapters.
Howard has written an invaluable guide to what we might call Wellington’s India. He played the vital role in these campaigns, though certainly not the only one. Despite the odd inclusion of lists into the main text, which arrests the flow at times, Howard writes well, and his battle narratives are particularly good. He also sprinkles illuminating primary source material throughout the text and is assisted by some first-class colour plates of scenes and major players. Anyone interested in the wars in India will want this book, as will military history students for this period in general.
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by RNS | Dec 14, 2020 | Beating Tsundoku
Leonard Low, Scotland’s Untold Stories (Guardbridge Books, 2020)
Imagine sitting in front of a roaring fire on a cold winter’s night in Scotland. The wind howls around the house, rain batters the windows, and your favourite uncle, sitting beside the fire, the light sparkling through his whisky glass, says “I have a story for you”. That should set the scene to read Leonard Low’s Scotland’s Untold Stories, a collection of dark tales from Scotland’s murky past gleaned from sources long since forgotten.
Low tells stories of a warrior with an iron hand, an expensive dram of whisky, cannibals, executions by drowning, duels, witch hunters, seers, a curious jail cell in a bridge, a botched execution, pirates, the white slave trade, John Paul Jones, early balloon flights, early lighthouses, a curling disaster, a brave death at Waterloo, graverobbers, wife selling, a church disaster and one in a quarry, a riot in a church, dream evidence in a murder investigation, German U-Boats, an outbreak of St. Vitus Dance in Leuchars, a lucky escape from the Moors Murderers, and Jack the Ripper in the East Neuk of Fife? Surely not!
It is customary to highlight the best and weakest stories in a compendium, but in this book Low’s selection is of consistently high quality, though credit must be given to the way he tells them. And that is also how they should be read; with an ear for cadence and rhythm as if listening to the storytellers of old. This is no accident, however, because Low has done his homework in the archives and on the ground, and he helpfully lists his sources and books for further reading where available. You can also visit many of the sites where these stories happened. Low may lean towards the romantic at times, but this is Scotland after all where we treat the darkness then with more of a weather eye now. Anyone interested in Scotland’s history will appreciate and enjoy Low’s stories and ask when volume 2 is coming out.
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by RNS | Dec 12, 2020 | Beating Tsundoku
Michael Graham, On Operations with C Squadron SAS (Pen & Sword, 2020)
In this, the third book on Michael Graham’s exploits in the SAS, the author takes us into the African bush to fight communist terrorists during the late 1960s and 1970s. His stories are sometimes hair-raising, sometimes amusing, but always interesting and worth reading.
The book opens by profiling the men we are about to meet and share their experiences, from General Peter George Walls down through the ranks. Next comes some maps and a brief history of the unit and its reorganisation into an effective fighting force. Then we are off and running, literally, on an account of an evasion training exercise. Active missions followed: recovering evidence, training Portuguese troops in Angola, assaulting an MPLA base, and hunting terrorists in Mozambique. In 1980, after 12 years of almost constant fighting and with defeat looming in Rhodesia, the unit disbanded with many going on to serve with the South African army. Graham also describes South African efforts to destabilize Zimbabwe and the possible assassination of guerrilla leader Samora Michel, though Graham was not involved in the latter. Graham concludes with a brief family and personal biography, culminating in his facing the reality that at the time of writing he had lung cancer and not long to live.
Graham is a terrific storyteller, writing in a journalistic style. His tales of combat are those of an authentic cold warrior fighting on the front lines of a proxy war. His perspective is personal and focused on his work, though he detours into an extended opinion of how the British let down Rhodesia after Margaret Thatcher was asked to help and refused. Fighting communists was Graham’s life for twelve years, so it is unsurprising how much he hates them, but he shows little understanding of the conflict beyond the stark realities of war. For those interested in small unit combat operations in Africa, this is a very good read.
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