ww2

Bf 109 Jabo Units in the West is from Osprey and is Number 149 in their Combat Aircraft series. Written by Malcolm V Lowe, it covers the use of the Bf 109 as a fighter-bomber (Jagdbomber in German and abbreviated to Jabo) against British targets in 1940-42 and then as part of Op Bodenplatte on...

Roland White probably needs no introduction as an author of fast paced aviation histories. This, I hoped, was no exception. I was not disappointed. This book weaves together the stories of the Mosquito, the airmen who flew them and the resistance movement in Denmark. There is plenty of detail...

P-38 Lightning vs Bf 109 is from Osprey and is part of their Duel series. Written by Edward M. Young, it covers the aerial combats between the two fighters over North Africa, Sicily and Italy in 1942-43. Once again, Osprey has exposed gaps in my knowledge. Like so many British people, what I...

Hans Seidler is an enthusiastic collector of WW2 memorabilia and an authority on German formations and equipment. He has many titles in print with Pen & Sword's Images of War series including; Hitler's Tank Killer - Stürmgeschutze at War 1940-1945, Battle of Kursk, Luftwaffe Flak & Field...

Another offering from the pen of Ian Baxter, written for the Pen & Sword publishers in their Images of War series. The book was published in 2023 and is the 60th title by Ian Baxter. Ian Baxter is an author and photographic collector whose books draw an increasing following. Among his many...

The Royal Navy in the Downfall of Japan. Brian Lane Herder Illustrator PaulWright. Osprey Books. In September 1944, with Germany seemingly about to collapse, and after a lot of political and strategic infighting, Churchill declared that a British Pacific Fleet would be formed and sent to aid...

This title is part of the Osprey Combat series. These focus on a pair of combatants in a particular campaign and follow a set formula. Each book is 80 pages long with a set number of two tone and colour spreads every couple of pages. This work is a readable account of the organisation and...

Histories of WW2 armour can gravitate to the view that all allied tanks were inferior to German models. Perhaps comparing German tanks of 1943 to allied tanks of 1940. In fact, the situation was more nuanced. In the years leading up to 1939 France was a major tank producer and the BEF was more...

For the Tankie community. My uncle served in RAF in S.Africa tail end of WW2. Clearing my late Aunt's house I found a bunch of old negatives in an envelope and had them digitized, including the attached photo from an Arab street, possibly Cairo or Alexandria . I suspect he was up North on R&R...

There is an interesting, but rather off topic, discussion on Bomber Command going on in the Changing The Army thread. Rather than divert an interesting discussion in itself further, I thought it would be better to post a few replies I had here to encourage two separate but worthwhile threads...

Andrew Sangster. Dr Andrew Sangster holds his doctorate in Modern European History as well as degrees in Law, Theology, History and English. Among his books are several biographies including Lord Alan Brooke, Beria, Franco, Göring, Goebbels and Himmler. In this book he examines the 23 Nuremburg...

Combined Operations An Official History of Amphibious Warfare against Hitler's Third Reich 1940-1945 Frontline Books (Pen & Sword) Yorkshire 2022 ISBN 978-1-39904-022-8 410 pages including appendices, plus introduction and illustrations John Grehan has a pedigree in looking at official...

British Frigates and Escort Destroyers 1939-45 (New Vanguard, Osprey, Angus Konstam (Author), Adam Tooby (Illustrator), 2023) This 48-page medium-sized softback is another offering from Osprey's 'New. Vanguard' series, dealing primarily with military and naval equipment and innovations. This...

Scan of Table 5 from William Smith's book ' Chrurchill's Arctic Convoys'

Pen and Sword ISBN1399002813 Firstly don’t get this confused with any of the other books with similar or even the same title, there was after all an entire orchestra in the camp. This is about Elsa, the authors mother, and some of her friends. It’s also about the Author, and partly is a...

Blood, Dust and Snow by Robin Schaefer, Friedrich Sander “Blood, Dust and Snow” is a collection of diary extracts by the Panzer Commander, Friedrich Sander who saw action on the Eastern Front. German historian, Robin Schaefer put them together in a readable form and this book is the end...

The leadership journeys of George Patton, Bernard Montgomery, and Erwin Rommel Three of the most famous Generals of WW2 are studied to see how their individual command personalities developed. Each one has a completely different personality, Montgomery – acerbic and staid, Patton – over the top...

Panzer Reconnaissance is a detailed study of the reconnaissance forces within the German Panzer Divisions of WW2. Written by Thomas Anderson, a German enthusiast who is a specialist in German WW2 armoured fighting vehicles (a couple of other books by him have been reviewed previously on this...

This has been a very difficult review to write because the book often reads more like a novel than historic fiction. I don’t wish to denigrate the author or publisher, but for a book of this sort surely we ought to have references backing up the stories? The brief list of acknowledgements just...

The Italian campaign of 1943 and 1944 was one of a steady slog up the Italian peninsula. In general the Germans chose the battlegrounds they wished to fight on and in retreat were well able to always fall back on prepared positions. There were the obvious clashes between the German Army plans...

Hi, Been a long time lurker on the site, so have decided to offer up a little content to it. With the extensive interest in modeling and restoration, I thought that this might be of interest to some. It is nothing to do with model making in any way; but is something I have been doing for a...

This book is badly misrepresented by its title; far from being a history of German resistance to the Nazis, it is instead a book of two parts. The first part is a collection of disparate essays on a variety of subjects, from Catholic dissent, via the frankly barking Rudolf Hess to a plodding...

I received this book for review at Christmas 2023. On starting it I put is aside and waited till well after family festivities before returning to it to review it. Not because of the quality of the book but because I found the subject matter particularly difficult. That is not a criticism of...

Were you ever the not-quite-so-charismatic but effective member of the team that did a huge amount of work to get things going, but found yourself a little overlooked when the praise and gongs were handed out to deserving but cooler team-mates? If so, then this book is for you! This appears to...

This book is written against a background of the well-covered trope of “how awful British tanks were in the second world war and how stupid our Cavalry Regiments were”; whilst the partial truth of this is acknowledged, it is a refreshing re-appraisal of not only the equipment used, but the...

The Cactus Air Force Eric Hammel and Thomas McKelvey Cleaver Air War over Guadacanal Over a period of 40 years the Historian and Author Eric Hammel interviewed more than 150 of the servicemen who participated in the battle to survive Guadacanal, in many ways a coming of age for the...

Tim Saunders Pen & Sword Military, Barnsley, 2022 ISBN978-1-39901-047-4 315 pages including Orbat Appendix Endnotes and Index Buy from Amazon here Tim Saunders has written a number of books looking at the Normandy Campaign., among the eighteen books that he has had published He also is...

Save The Last Bullet Memoire of a boy soldier in Hitler’s Army By Wilhelm Langbein with Heidi Langbein-Allen Brainwashing. It sounds insidious, doesn’t it? It’s what happened in one of those countries from the old Soviet Union, or maybe one of the countries ending in -stan. It couldn’t...

Tim Moreman. Osprey Books Another soft back Osprey book with just the amount of information needed to understand the operations in the theatre without getting bogged down in too much detail. The book opens with commanders of the forces on which the Allied side there are some pretty famous...

Pen & Sword, Yorkshire 2022 ISBN 978 1 47383 493 4 269 pages including maps and photos. For members of the Royal Artillery, the author probably needs no introduction; for others Frank Baldwin is the co-author of Gunners in Normandy: the Regimental History of the Royal Artillery in the...

A13 Cruiser Mk2:-

Junkers Ju-188 Units of WW2 (Combat Aircraft) by Robert Forsyth with illustrations by Gareth Hector and Janusz Swiatlon Say what you like about the German war machine in World War Two, but innovation and technology were bywords in their design brief. From the Tiger tank to the Focke-Wulf...

Taken from his father’s diaries, this is the tale of a soldier in the RAPC and his war. Called up early in 1940, Stark was initially medically downgraded so sent to the RAPC where it was found he had some experience as a Cost Accountant. Stark had been an apprentice accountant with a paper...

A bit of pondering today as you do... about how we could have lost the 2nd world war IF the US hadn't have committed actual manpower to the allied effort rather than arms and subsidised bits. The US didn't seem remotely interested in joining the Allies offensive wise until the Japs decided to...

Berlin is an enigmatic city which has seen and suffered so much, especially in the 20th Century. The author brings the city to life starting off as the capital city of an Empire, finishing off as the capital of Germany as part of the EU. This period, the 20th century, saw Berlin go from being a...

Chris Bucholtz Osprey, Oxford 2022 80 pages including illustrations, photos and index ISBN PB9781472850041 This small book is number 2 in the Dogfight series from Osprey. The author has written about military aviation for a number of years and has had three books previously published by...

I won't bore you all with the details I included in my Reference Image back in November 2020, anybody wishing to read up on the vehicle please feel free to read the said reference. Suffice to say, the Humber Heavy Utility (aka The Box) was a very useful piece of kit, used as both a staff car and...

Hello from France! On this day 78 years ago, a young soldier from Lancashire, Joe, disappeared without a trace, somewhere in Normandy. For his family, on the other side of the Channel, he could come home any day... but he never did. I just did a 73-minute-long film about the 18-month...

Almost endex for the Invasion of Italy 1943-45 and here is my finished build. Most components were purchased from Italeri as they seem to be the only supplier making Italian military vehicles. We have an AS42 Sahariana, built originally as a fast reconnaissance vehicle to match the LRDG in the...

The 614th was formed in July of 1942 at Camp Carson USA, they were to be equipped with towed anti tank artillery firing a 3 inch round, forming the backbone of the anti tank protection in the coming battles in Europe, however as the Author explains, the towed weapons were really out of date ...