Current Reading - April 2024

First off for the month. Finished The Mosquito Log: The Most Versatile Aeroplane of World War II by Alexander McKee. This book is a narrative history of the aircraft told by anecdotal stories from those who flew the plane or maintained it or designed it. Also stories from their opponent in the air and on the ground. Really not much about the aircraft itself but OK if you like reading old war stories.

>1 jztemple: Is it just about the Mosquito, or does it compare it to other planes used in the same roles?

i've just finished reading The Catholic Case Against War by David Carrol Cochran. Don't be put off by the word "Catholic". While it does refer to Catholic teaching on war, it explores a wide range of independent analysis, academic research and military history. It casts doubt on the popular assumption that war is a perhaps unfortunate but nevertheless necessary, inevitable and/or effective tool for resolving disputes. It reinforces a great deal of modern evidence-based research which shows that nonviolent means of resolving disputes have, overall, been far more successful than violent military ones.

>3 John5918:

It seems to me that Cochran may be overestimating the resolution of disputes as a motive for war.

>4 AndreasJ:

Could you elaborate on that a bit? Maybe it depends on one's definition of "dispute", but it seems to me that most wars are a result of disputes in the broadest sense of the word; disputes (or disagreements) over territory, resources, power, politics, governance, ethnicity, nationalism, religion, oppression or whatever. War has often been seen as a legitimate and even routine tool of achieving foreign (and in some cases domestic) policy aims, in other words imposing one's own desired outcome on those who disagree, reject, resist or are in dispute over it.

I finished The Curragh Incident by Sir James Fergusson (a.k.a. 8th Baronet of Kilkerran: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_James_Fergusson,_8th_Baronet)

Apologies for the long review . . .

In early 1914, with a Liberal government in power in England, it had been more or less decided that Ireland would be granted Home Rule. The problem was what to do about the northern counties, whose Protestant majority considered themselves loyal subjects of the British Crown and wanted no part of being ruled, even nominally, by Catholic Ireland. In Ulster, the locals had put together a disciplined and quite strong Protestant militia and all and sundry feared partisan violence if the English Parliament tried to mandate Irish Home rule throughout the island. Cue the action of The Curragh Incident.

It had come to the attention of the English government, and in particular the Secretary of State for War, Colonel J. E. B. Seely, that the English army had stores of ammunition in several locations around northern Ireland that were only loosely guarded and might be vulnerable to being seized by the Ulstermen should any hostilities arise. So the order went out to Lt. General Sir Arthur Paget, commander of the British forces in Ireland, to see to securing those stores. Unfortunately, Paget did not get these orders in writing, and what the orders actually were, as opposed to how Paget actually interpreted them, became a source of controversy and contention. Most of the British forces in Ireland at the time were quartered and trained at a very large open field in County Kildare known as the Curragh. Installed there were several regiments, including infantry, artillery and calvary. It was well known that a large majority of the officers there were sympathetic to the Ulstermen, whom they saw as loyalists to the British Crown. So, despite the fact that the only orders Paget ostensively had was to secure those stores of ammunition, he sent word to the commanders of the regiments at the Curragh that every officer had to be asked whether he would be willing to obey orders to take action "against the Ulstermen." Any officer answering "no" would be cashiered from the service, with no pension to be forthcoming regardless of length of service. And they were given in many cases but a half hour to decide. At first, many of these officers chose to quit, as much over the insult they saw in the ultimatum itself as for the import of the actual question.

In the meantime, plans were, it seems (Fergusson lays out the evidence but does not make the claim that this evidence is conclusive), actually being laid out for the large-scale movement of troops into Ulster, and several naval vessels were dispatched in support. The plans were created by Seely and the First Lord of the Admiralty. Guess who? Yup, none other than Winston Churchill. Nobody told the Prime Minister, however, Henry Asquith, who was caught quite flat-footed when news of the "Curragh Incident" broke, or the King, George V, in whose name the orders were presumably given. The idea was, supposedly, to provoke the Ulster Militia to take action against the Army, so that armed resistance to universal Irish Home Rule could be crushed.

In the end, cooler heads among the officers prevailed, nobody quit, and the ammunition was protected. Paget, who does not come off well in this narrative at all, inadvertently threw a monkey wrench into the plot, if such there was, by evidently overstepping his orders (which, again, were never put in writing) and demanding that the loyalty ultimatum be put to the officers. Interestingly, other than an officer's loyalty to king and crown, one of the key arguments against even hypothetically refusing orders to take action "against Ulster" was some officers' logic that if the officers were going to refuse such orders, how could they expect the enlisted men, who were mostly from working class families, to obey orders given during "strike duty," when the army was used to quell violence by striking factory and mine workers? (A wild guess would be that the army seldom took action to protect strikers, but I don't know the actual history.)

In the end, the question of Irish Home Rule was put on the back burner by the outbreak of World War I. I don't know whether the "Curragh Incident" is still even remembered in England these days. Certainly, as an American, I'd never heard of it. I picked up this book recently off a bookstore dollar rack on a whim. I seem to be on a roll of reading obscure bios/histories/mysteries from bygone eras!

I will say that, writing some 50 years after the event (the book was published in 1963), Fergusson does a very good job of recreated these events in day-by-day and even hour-by-hour detail. As I got deeper into the narrative, I became very interested, despite the by-now obscure nature of the history itself. The personality of the individual officers and politicians are recreated quite vividly (though of course I have no idea how accurately). I wondered after about 30 or 40 pages why I was bothering with a book about such an obscure (at least for an American) event, but quickly thereafter and for the rest of the book, found myself quite interested.

Wrapped up U.S. Navy Attack Aircraft, 1920-2020, another typically excellent work by Norman Friedman. Was glad I could borrow it from a library as I didn't realize that the book was merely bound in cardboard with pasted-on cover art; that's a consideration if I actually get around to buying it.

>2 Karlstar: It is just about the Mosquito.

Finished To the Limit of Endurance. Excellent. It follows a Marine battalion through World War 1. By focusing on a battalion the book provides some insight into the larger picture of the battles it fought while leaving plenty of room to describe the experiences of the individual soldiers and field officers. Very enlightening about just how unprepared the US military was to fight WW1, how experience lead to adjustments and improvements, and just how dear the price was. Not just narrative, the author provides interesting analysis.

Knocked off No One Avoided Danger, one of a set dealing with how war came to the various American aviation installations on Oahu on December 7, and concentrating on NAS Kaneohe Bay. It felt very complete (including lots of pictures) and makes me look forward to reading the other books in the series.

Wrapped up Red Assault, an examination of the first decade or so of the Russian airborne force. My expectation is that I'd come away informed about the nuts-and-bolts aspects of this effort, and such was the case. To be fair to the author, he does better than that, but being in translation, and lacking much documentation of sources, one is going to be left with doubts.

Next up, Posters of the Great War by Frédérick Hadley and Martin Pegler. This high quality book was published in association with the Historical Museum of the Great War in France. It contains reproductions of posters held by the museum. The book starts with a section about the importance and impact of posters in history. Then there are a number of chapters such as Recruiting, Loans and Money, The Soldier etc that each start with a short introduction and then show a number of posters, each with description captions. The book finishes with a chapter on posters published later but still referring back to the Great War. Overall the book is very interesting and informative.

I've just read The Mountains Wait, a memoir by Theodor Broch. Broch was the mayor of the far northern Norwegian town of Narvik when the Nazis invaded in 1940. He describes here his arrival in Narvik as a young lawyer, his gradual entrance into local politics and election as mayor. Of course, the Nazi invasion and occupation is described in great and effective detail, including the initial naval battle in which a pair of Norwegian destroyers were sunk almost immediately in Ofot Fjord upon refusing to surrender. There are a pair of subsequent battles after the British navy showed up. On April 10, 1940, the British lost three ships while sinking two German vessels, and on April 13, the British succeeded in sinking the remainder of the original 10-destroyer invasion fleet. Later, Narvik was temporarily liberated by a combination of Polish, Norwegian, British and French Foreign Legion forces. But shortly thereafter the town was given up when the British decided to pull up stakes and abandon the attempt to defend Norway.

Eventually Broch had to escape the country when the order went out to arrest him. He describes his time in the U.S. lecturing about the plight of Norway and trying to raise money from American Norwegian immigrants for the country's government and armed forces in exile. The American college students he talks to wonder how Norway could have allowed itself to be so surprised by the German attack. Right up until Pearl Harbor Day, that is. The Mountains Wait was published in 1943, while the war, obviously, was still ongoing, and its intent was clearly to provide propaganda value in the U.S. Broch couldn't know that Norway would still be in German hands when the Nazis surrendered to the Allies.

Wrapped up Adventurous Empires, a history of the Shorts C-Class passenger flying boats, wrapped in a general overview of British international policy; surprisingly dense, which I consider a good thing. Pen & Sword is as likely to produce a pot-boiler as something worthwhile. There is a good bit of coverage of the type when impressed variously by the British, Australian, and New Zealand governments during World War II.

Finished "Bristol’s Buckingham, Brigand and Buckmaster" (bad touchstone is bad), a typical MMP/Stratus production that really shines as an operational history of the Bristol Brigand.

I failed to mention I finished Ian Heath's Armies of the Aztec and Inca Empires, other native peoples of the Americas, and the Conquistadores last week. A wargamer's guide with line art in the style of the old WRG books, it's a very good example of its genre.

Started in on Patton's Air Force Interesting to read about Patton's interest in the air arm. A good reminder that he wasn't just "Bood and Guts", but also a military intellectual.

Wrapped up On a Knife Edge, a magisterial accounting of the lethal misadventure that was statecraft and war-making in Second Reich in 1914-18. About half and half higher military strategy on one hand, and internal German politics on the other. At times reading like it might have sounded better in the original German, it's still recommended reading if one is still wondering how premeditated the more aggressive German war aims were.

Finishing up the month with Stopping the Panzers, a good chunk of operational history about the achievements of the 3rd Canadian Division in the early days of Operation Overlord.

Finished reading The Storm Before the Storm by Mike Duncan. It focuses on the decades prior to the Civil War period that includes well known figures such as Crassus, Pompey, and Caesar. While it deals with the political issues and constitutional crises happening in Rome during this time, it also deals heavily with Roman military matters and exploits during this time period.