Whatcha reading redux.

Everything cultural, pop or otherwise. Books, movies, music, comics, poetry, random cultural geekery.
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Netpackrat
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Re: Whatcha reading redux.

Post by Netpackrat »

Yeah, the introduction of the chin turret kind of took a lot of the appeal out of the "twelve-o-clock high" attack. Some of the material I have read also expressed frustration at how difficult the B-17 was to actually bring down. They had special variants of their fighters equipped with extra gun pods and the like, which had to be escorted into attack position by standard fighters, because they were too heavy to be much good at dogfighting.
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Weetabix
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Re: Whatcha reading redux.

Post by Weetabix »

Marching Upcountry by David Drake and John Ringo. Not finished yet, but I'm enjoying it.
Note to self: start reading sig lines. They're actually quite amusing. :D
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Vonz90
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Re: Whatcha reading redux.

Post by Vonz90 »

Jericho941 wrote:
Kommander wrote:Having just finished "Tigers in the Mud" by Otto Carius I have to say that this book really contributes to the "Deutchland Ubermench" myth. The authors description of the Russians forces it pretty good, and he obviously respected them on some level. However he has nothing but disdain for the Americans, to the point to where the reader is forced to wonder just how the Americans ever defeated a single German unit if they were as incompetent as he alleges. He seems to think that the only reason they lost was due to poor command decisions, not actually getting outfought. Never mind that this is the kind of crap Hitler used in the first place to further his "stabbed in the back" narrative.

There are other issues with the book. The author first acts as if he is totally ignorant to the larger political situation in Europe, other than that Russians are bad. This is believable in the context that the author was young and focused on his job etc. Fair enough. However he also acts clueless as to why the allies and later the German people have such a poor opinion of the Wehrmacht. He fails to understand that the just doing your job bit falls a bit flat at a certain point. Certainly no one blames the common soldier directly for what happened, but at the same time they were used by the Nazis to further their political ambitions and enable them to murder a whole bunch of people. The author seems to be totally unable to understand this.
Yeah, if the Americans sucked so bad, who'd he surrender to in the end? :lol:

The thing is, I really do enjoy reading the stories of German aces. Otto Carius, Adolf Galland, etc. But the important thing to remember is the big fat grain of salt to take along for the ride. They were prideful men. Prideful Germans, even. They would seize any ground to nurture their ego, and the German technowizardry and military magic myths lend power to their narrative.

Fact is, it doesn't matter how graceful their faceplants were, they still got BTFO.
There is a lot of truth to that. On the other side of the coin, we spent a lot of time studying the Germans in my NWC Operational Planning class for the simple reason that they were really good at it (and more or less invented the modern form of it). When they say that they were good at what they did, it is most definitely not all bravado. We don't study the Japanese or Russians (or Brits or French) in the same way.

I don't grudge the average soldier/sailor/pilot to be proud of the fact that they put up a hell of a fight under rather nasty conditions when they were not really given the tools to be successful. Whether we are talking Wehrmacht or our guys who fought in Vietnam (or even Iraq or A'stan), I don't really think it is wrong for them to say that if victory was not achieved it was not their fault.

We like to think otherwise, but the truth is that the results in war are mostly top down. The top leadership of a nation needs to put their military in a position where they can win a war and then follow through with enough willpower to carry it through. Wars will not be won if you pick a fight with most of the rest of the world (Germany) or quit it the middle of the war (us). So figuring out if the soldiers did a good job or not is a more nuanced question than asking who won the war.
Last edited by Vonz90 on Mon Feb 02, 2015 11:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
toad
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Re: Whatcha reading redux.

Post by toad »

It's been a while since I read it but "Raid" by Roger Barron is interesting. It is the story of a raid set up by Gen. Patton to rescue his son-in-law from a German prisoner of war camp.
I found it interesting because the Germans and the Brits removed whole units out of the line to rest and re-equip them. The raid ran right into an area where an experienced German unit was doing its R&R.
One thing I remember from the book was that the raiding unit ran into a battery of 88's in trail on a road. As soon as they saw the guns they hosed them. It was an anti-aircraft unit "manned" by Flack Girls. Kind of upset the guys.
This brings up another German Problem, The Luftwaffe was in charge of anti-aircraft guns and the German army was desperate for anti-tank guns. This lead to some head banging on the Germans part. The flack 88's were used against tanks but they had some problems, they were set up high so that they could be aimed and loaded straight up. You had to be careful on the terrain you set them up on.
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randy
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Re: Whatcha reading redux.

Post by randy »

toad wrote: The raid ran right into an area where an experienced German unit was doing its R&R.
That has a familiar ring to it (Arnhem)
...even before I read MHI, my response to seeing a poster for the stars of the latest Twilight movies was "I see 2 targets and a collaborator".
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Jered
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Re: Whatcha reading redux.

Post by Jered »

toad wrote: This brings up another German Problem, The Luftwaffe was in charge of anti-aircraft guns and the German army was desperate for anti-tank guns. This lead to some head banging on the Germans part. The flack 88's were used against tanks but they had some problems, they were set up high so that they could be aimed and loaded straight up. You had to be careful on the terrain you set them up on.
IIRC, the Luftwaffe had a large number of ground troops.
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JAG2955
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Re: Whatcha reading redux.

Post by JAG2955 »

I couldn't sleep one night, so I picked up my copy of Tolkien's "Children of Hurin." I'm about halfway through now, and while it's an easier read than LOTR and by far easier than the Silmarillion, it's still a little deep. Very good in small doses, however.
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randy
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Re: Whatcha reading redux.

Post by randy »

Jered wrote:
IIRC, the Luftwaffe had a large number of ground troops.
The Fallschirmjager and the Herman Goering Panzer division were Luftwaffe troops.
...even before I read MHI, my response to seeing a poster for the stars of the latest Twilight movies was "I see 2 targets and a collaborator".
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chem light
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Re: Whatcha reading redux.

Post by chem light »

I always have what I term a "traffic safety" book on my phone. By safety, I mean that of the drivers in my general vicintity whenever Fairfax traffic goes haywire, a pretty much hourly event. Audible has prevented many an absent minded or discourteous driver from being driven off the road by a small, blue Toyota.


But that is neither here nor there. I just finished the first book in a series called The Dresden Files. I greatly enjoyed it and have already downloaded the second. If you like MHI, you'll probably like this. I'm guessing. What do I know? I'm not psychic.
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evan price
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Re: Whatcha reading redux.

Post by evan price »

chem light wrote:I always have what I term a "traffic safety" book on my phone. By safety, I mean that of the drivers in my general vicintity whenever Fairfax traffic goes haywire, a pretty much hourly event. Audible has prevented many an absent minded or discourteous driver from being driven off the road by a small, blue Toyota.


But that is neither here nor there. I just finished the first book in a series called The Dresden Files. I greatly enjoyed it and have already downloaded the second. If you like MHI, you'll probably like this. I'm guessing. What do I know? I'm not psychic.
I'm on book five of the Dresden files and I just started them around Christmas time.
Two thumbs up, it's good reading.
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