What are you reading right now?

[kilerkg]

The one that got away - Chris Ryan - Bravo Two Zero Mission



It's shocking to read how horribly prepared the unit was, from a overarching command point. Piss poor ammo supply, No claymore's or M203's, 50 year old outdated maps, no Intel given which was available, wrong radio frequencies given and they didn't know / weren't told that it reached freezing temperatures at night. What's worse is that seemingly no lessons were learned for the future missions. You would expect the SAS to be given what ever tools/equipment they need for the job. Scary stuff!

I've got Andy McNab's book as well so will give that a read at some point to what differences there are.

[Jimbuna]

[Otto Harkaman]

Peter Hennessy, James Jinks, "The Silent Deep: A History of the Royal Navy Submarine Service Since 1945"



"The Ministry of Defence does not comment upon submarine operations" is the standard response of officialdom to enquiries about the most secretive and mysterious of Britain's armed forces, the Royal Navy Submarine Service. Written with unprecedented cooperation from the Service itself and privileged access to documents and personnel, The Silent Deep is the first authoritative history of the Submarine Service from the end of World War II to the present.

Cold War Command: The Dramatic Story of a Nuclear Submariner by Dan Conley



The part played in the Cold War by the Royal Navy's submarines still retains a great degree of mystery and, in the traditions of the 'Silent Service,' remains largely shrouded in secrecy. Cold War Command brings us as close as is possible to the realities of commanding nuclear hunter-killer submarines, routinely tasked to hunt out and covertly follow Soviet submarines in order to destroy them should there be any outbreak of hostilities.

[tmccarthy]

I Fought for the Kaiser - Memoirs of a Reluctant Soldier 1914-1915 by Julius Koettgen

[Murph89]

Book 4 in the outlander series.


A ton of information for collectors or those just interested in vintage .22's

[STEED]

AUSCHWITZ

The Nazis & The Final Solution

By Laurence Rees

Not light reading material.

[Murph89]

I've sampled some books on Amazon and will start with this one to get a better understanding of what it was like to be a crewmember. Knowing what I know now I wish that I'd have visited the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago when I was stationed in Great Lakes for "A" school in the Navy and visited this boat in person.

[Catfish]

Reading the second book of the "remembrance of earth's past" trilogy, "The dark forest". I must say all other books i have read in the last years really are getting pale in comparison, the idea and concept of this is just grand. Most characters are not very well developed, and you seldom feel a real sympathy, but then you do not need to, it is all about telling the story.
And there's the third book still to read, *looking forward*.
#5 member of the wallfacer project

A female chinese technician who has been spared from being killed during Mao's "cultural revolution", is forced to work in an astrophysical facility in the 1960ies, like western SETI, being the chinese version and a military facility researching the use of strong radio waves as weapons. They are sending also out messages into space, not expecting an answer. The technician soon discovers that sending radio messages into space will take decades to get to the nearest star system, and the signal is also much too weak. While using some of the restricted time to prove some own solar theories, she finds a way to use one of the sun's atmosphere shells as an amplifier, sending one short string of information.

Decades later an incoming answer is accidentally being found, advising to better stop messaging. Instead the technician, having seen the brutality of communist rule in China and now living in the time of the late cold war, sends an invitation with the request to stop mankind from destroying itself.

This all is being told along with other story strings, about a computer game called "The three body problem". The latter is exactly the problem the aliens have with their triple suns and their planet, but the best human scientists have to give up on a solution because the problem is virtually unsolvable. Which is why the aliens decide to leave their chaotic planet, and evacuate to earth. The voyage will last 450 years, the same time the earth has to prepare for the invasion.

At the time of first radio contact in the 1950ies, humanity is technologically behind the "aliens", though the latter fear that earth will be superior in some 200 years. But the aliens have some aces up their sleeve, they are able to block earth's scientists to transgress a certain line of scientific evolution and development with their "sophons", proton-sized supercomputers sent for espionage and to halt scientific progress on Earth.. and all that is being written, stored or spoken, can be immediately read. A real problem..

[Solid_Stalker]

Making Things Move DIY Mechanisms for Inventors, Hobbyists, and Artists by Dustyn Roberts.
I'm enjoying it, very practical book

[Subnuts]

Currently about 2/3rds of the way through Norman Friedman's Naval Anti-Aircraft Guns and Gunnery. It's a pretty solid tome, richly detailed, well illustrated, and surprisingly readable. But egads, is the editing terrible. I keep on having to back up and re-read passages every few pages because of typos and garbled sentence structures. I'm still learning a lot from it, but I wish Dr. Friedman's last few books were more carefully written and edited.

I'm currently awaiting my copy of Murray Barber's new V2: The A4 Rocket from Peenemunde to Redstone. I've always been more interested in the V2 in the context of the development of rocketry, than as a weapon, so this book should hopefully fit the bill.

[tmccarthy]

Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914-1918 by Louis Barthas

[Subnuts]

I recently wrote a review of Haynes' new "workshop manual" for the A-1 Skyraider, but it isn't posting for some reason. Thought I'd post it here instead.

2017 was kind of an odd year for Haynes. Although they published a number of fine books, many of their newer "manuals" were novelty books, lacking the in-depth technical details that were a highlight of their earlier titles. This book, for the most part, is a refreshing return to form for Haynes, and much closer in tone to their "classic" aircraft manuals, such as the ones on the de Havilland Tiger Moth and Avro Lancaster.

As usual, there are brief introductions focusing on the design of the aircraft, the different variants, and the type's combat record. Where this book really impresses are in the two chapters dedicated to the anatomy of the aircraft and the inner workings of its massive Wright R3350 engine. The author is currently an engineer with Kennet Aviation, which currently has the AD-4NA G-RADR in its collection, and he certainly knows his stuff. The descriptions of individual systems - hydraulics, oil, flying controls, undercarriage, etc. - are surprisingly in-depth, and there are dozens of "guts of the airplane" type photographs accompanying them. There's also a large number of diagrams sourced from original Technical Orders and maintenance manuals, ranging from views of the wing pin-pulling cylinder and hydraulic reservoir to overviews of the landing gear hydraulic system and propeller controls. If you're an airplane geek, you're going to find a lot to love here. Along with the technical material, there are quite a few personal recollections from former Skyraider pilots and armorers, and some modern-day accounts from those tasked with keeping surviving aircraft flying and maintained for the airshow circuit.

Unfortunately, the writing in the non-technical is rather clumsy in places (too many exclamation points!), as in the translation of an account from a French mercenary pilot. The diagrams are large and clear, but unfortunately quite a few of them lack keys. One major disappointment is actually the binding. Since mid-2016 Haynes has been using proper stitched bindings, rather than the poor-quality glued bindings used previously, which split way too easily and wouldn't stay open. This book seems to use a combination of both techniques. I'm not sure how it'll hold up in the long run, but hopefully, this is just a minor hiccup and Haynes will use stitched bindings in the future. That aside, this is still a pretty solid reference, and more detailed than I'd expected it to be.

[Subnuts]

Amazon is being a real PITA lately about posting my reviews, and since I've been on a bit of a reading rampage lately, here's my review of Osprey's new(ish) book on the Bell X-2.

The X-2 was one of my best-loved airplanes as a child, and I remember drawing a two-foot-long profile of the plane for my mom's cubicle when I was six. As an adult, I've been disappointed by the lack of a serious book devoted to the plane. I've usually considering Osprey's books rather trifling things, and this is actually the first I've ever bought.

Thankfully, it's a more substantial work than its 80-page length and small format would suggest. There's a healthy level of detail throughout, including descriptions of the plane's major systems, the painful development period, the captive flight phase, all 20 flights, the fatal accidents that destroyed both aircraft, as well as pilot biographies. There are about 80 illustrations (about half in color), including color plans and profiles, a cockpit instrument layout, a cross-section, and an impressive two-page digital painting. Many of the photographs were new to me, especially those of the "Tempilaq" paint stripes which were used to measure the effects of heat erosion at high speeds.

Although I haven't been converted to an Osprey fanatic overnight, I'm pretty pleased by this book. My only real complaint is the lack of diagrams besides the two provided. A few more would have given a better understanding of the plane's inner workings. That aside, I might have to check out some of the other books in the X-Planes series in the near future.

[Subnuts]

A couple more reviews I've written recently. Hopefully no one minds if I toot my horn a little bit!

Allied Torpedo Boats (ShipCraft Special)
T-34 Tank "Owners' Workshop Manual"

Only gave three stars to both, because not everything can be an epic masterpiece.

[Jimbuna]

Well I certainly find them interesting enough to read