Current Reading - March 2025

A month or two back whilst fossicking through a second-hand bookstall at a local antique market, I was fortunate enough to stumble across a first edition hard cover dust jacketed copy of Wing Leader by ‘Johnnie’ Johnson. Though I had read it many times before, I couldn’t resist revisiting what is an air combat classic.

Johnson was the Royal Air Force’s top scoring fighter ace of the Second World War. First published in 1956, the book is part personal memoir, part paean to the men he fought with, and part elegy to those who did not survive.

A master of the art of deflection shooting, Johnson spent the war flying in Spitfire squadrons, fighting over Britain and Northwest Europe against the Luftwaffe, with only a short spell away from operations. Starting as a trainee Sergeant pilot in 1939, despite all his subsequent success that saw him ending the war as a highly decorated Group Captain, you are left with the impression he was a humble man. Only when you read closely and between the lines do you begin to realise what an exceptional pilot he was, what an outstanding tactician of the air battlespace he became over the course of the war, and that he was also an outstanding air combat leader, who inspired the men in the formations he led.

Republished many times and readily available, if you have any interest in the Second World War in the air, and haven’t read Wing Leader, track a copy down and treat yourself.

Thanks. Just found it free on Kindle Unlimited.

>2 John5918: Excellent!

Finished listening to E.B. Potter's Nimitz, which spans the length of his life with (obviously) focus towards his career. WW2 is the obvious focus of that career, but there was plenty both before and after that was interesting. He was a great storyteller, no doubt part of his likeability, and so there are some very enjoyable stories tucked in here and there in this book. This is definitely a Hero Story, but that's okay too - Nimitz wasn't a public self-promoter and saw his role as a symbol of the US Navy, quite the contrast to MacArthur.

Having read a biography of Spruance previously, it is worthwhile to contemplate each man separately but also as a team. In the early years of the war in the Pacific things were going so terribly it's simply fascinating to learn how they managed huge problems and true disasters. They optimized opportunities and definitely took some losses because of mistakes. I have to learn more about Forster and King, but I think I would like to read more about the Battles of the Coral Sea and of Leyte Gulf first.

This book had me looking for more places to learn about battle strategy, and I stumbled across a *very* detailed podcast from Down Under I'm actually enjoying tremendously, so I'll share the name here: "The Principles of War: Lessons from Military History on Strategy, Tactics, Doctrine and Leadership". This podcast starts with the Malaya Campaign, in the years before December 1941 and following. At least for this section on the Malaya Campaign, I'm finding the information about strategy and tactics dovetails nicely with trying to understand what was also going on at sea. But I'm still searching for works on sea strategy...

>4 PocheFamily: I've read Potter's Nimitz some years ago and very much enjoyed it, though I don't own a copy, your post has reminded me to put on my 'to do' list for future acquisitions. On the subject of sea strategy, a very long time ago I read I read John Keegan's The Price of Admiralty which I also don't own but enjoyed reading at the time... may fit the bill. Finally, if you have not come across him 'Drachinifel' on Youtube is pretty impressive across a range of historical naval topics.

>5 Bushwhacked: Thanks, added the Keegan book to my wishlist and will go check out the YouTube channel.

Finished reading Burn, Bomb, Destroy: The German Sabotage Campaign in North America, 1914–1917 by Michael Digby. I was initially enthused with this book but found it relied too much on anecdotes rather than analysis. Also the author had a habit of starting off chapters with the final event and then using the rest of the chapter as a flashback, which I found off-putting. Still, overall it was interesting.

I've just finished Bill's Secrets, which I rather enjoyed.

It’s 1945 and Major WR Probert, ostensibly a member of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, has survived the war. Known to his few friends as ‘Bill’ he’s had a more unusual war than most, the ribbon of the DSO and the Parachute badge on his breast hinting at some ‘out of the ordinary’ service. But the past is the past, and if there is one thing Bill’s war service has taught him, it’s how to keep secrets.

Handsome, university educated, well-travelled, and multilingual, the world is now his oyster. Back in England he marries well, raises a family, and with a flair for languages embarks on successful career as an executive for an international trading company travelling all over the world.

Retiring in his 50’s, he later moves with his wife to the south of France. In late 1994 a letter arrives at the family home… it’s a letter from a man his family don’t know from a place they have never heard of… and he’s looking for his long lost ‘Uncle Roy’. The letter arrives too late. Bill, ‘William Roy Probert’ has recently passed away.

Thus begins a daughter’s story over the ensuing decades of tugging at the threads of her father’s life to try and understand his origins and how he came to be the man he was. It’s the story of how an academically brilliant boy from the impoverished coal mining valleys of South Wales won scholarships to escape that world. Then the war offers him the ultimate chance to bury his origins and make his own way, seeing him quickly drawn into the world of military intelligence, including operations across Africa and the Middle East and behind the lines with the SOE in France.

The book is very much a journey of trying to discover the character of the man and why he chose to keep the secrets about his past that he did. Essentially a family history story, it’s a really good read, with enough of a military history component to be of interest from that perspective as well.

Currently reading World War I by S.L.A. Marshall.

Finished reading The War of Jenkins' Ear: The Forgotten Struggle for North and South America: 1739-1742 by Robert Gaudi. I approached this book with some trepidation due to mentions of the author's snarky tone at times, but was happy to find that the sarcasm was pretty limited, with the rest of the book an excellent and interesting story. There is a biography but no endnotes, so the reader must assess for themselves how much of the book to take on faith. Overall however I can highly recommend it.

>10 jztemple: Well, that's intrigued me... so I went and had a look at Wikipedia... I knew the Spanish were in Florida at some point but didn't know they came to blows with the English in Georgia in the mid 18th century!

Just finished Johnnie Johnson's Wing Leader. An interesting and very readable book. Apart from his camaraderie with and obvious respect for his fellow pilots, including famous names like Douglas Bader and Guy Gibson, this is an excellent description of the development of RAF fighter tactics during the course of World War II by someone who was there and indeed who helped to develop them. It's probably the clearest short explanation that I have seen.

I've also just bought Bill's Secrets, recommended in >8 Bushwhacked:, and I'm looking forward to reading it.

>12 John5918: Glad you enjoyed Wing Leader. Of all the various second world war pilot memoirs I've read over the years it is still my favourite. For what it is it's very well written and I have wondered whether Johnson had a ghostwriter, or at least a damn good editor. I know in a later book on air warfare he definitely had a co-author.

I think you will like Bill's Secrets. As you're an expat Brit who has seen a bit of the world, I expect you may come away with a different take on some aspects of it compared to me.

Just finished Bill's Secrets, as recommended by >8 Bushwhacked:. Interesting and intriguing, if perhaps a trifle too wordy. Thanks for the recommendation.

>14 John5918: Glad you got something out of it... yes, I agree it got a little bogged down in places but managed to extricate itself. And just when you think you were at the very end of it... there's the one last final secret!

Finished The Ghost Army: Conning the Third Reich by Gerry Souter. A narrative about the use of deception in WW2 by the British and US forces. It is rather limited in scope but does have a nice sampling of activities throughout the war. The latter part of the book focuses on the US Army's 23rd Headquarters, Special Troops, a bogus designation for an 1100 man unit who was tasked with various acts of deception, such as simulating the existence of a real unit in one location while the real unit moved to another location or actually pretending to be a completely non-existent unit. The activities of the 23rd are covered in more complete detail and could be considered the main subject of the book.

Finished 67 Shots, an close examination of the Kent State shootings, which arguably counts as military history for the level of detail about the Ohio National Guard that the author incorporates in this book. Most of the substantive books I read this month which touched on military matters, see also Palestine 1936 and Oil and the Great Powers, operate at the boundary between political decision making and military operations.

And I completed The Red Atlas: How the Soviet Union Secretly Mapped the World by John Davies and Alexander J. Kent. This is the fascinating story of how the Soviets spent untold rubles and hours compiling maps of the entire world. The project started just after WW2 and was intended as providing intelligence for countries that might fall under Communist rule, or might need a little help doing so. The maps were of a variety of scales, depending on the location, but all used essentially the same symbology and structure so that the Soviet military could use them quickly. There were also projects to develop maps for civilian use, including tourism, but these maps were purpose filled with distortions and errors so that foreign military officers would be mislead by them. I read the book on Kindle and it contained map full color maps which made the book even better.

>18 jztemple: Fascinating! When I was in grad school in Norway studying physical geography in the early 1980s we had some topographic maps from Communist Europe. Instead of contour lines they had shading keyed to ranges of slope value. The idea was to provide a picture of the landscape without giving away too much militarily useful information such as actual elevations.

Just finished Civil War Acoustic Shadows by Charles D. Ross. This is a very interesting and unusual look at the American Civil War, specifically how acoustic shadows and other auditory phenomenon affected the outcome of battles. The author starts off with a discussion of the battle of Gaine's Mill, probably the best know example of acoustic shadows. He then has a chapter that explains the science behind acoustics in air, explained in layman terms and focusing on the effects of atmospheric conditions on cannon and musketry fire. The next chapter discusses how leaders on a battlefield communicated with their troops and how the sounds of battle were important for those leaders to discern how a battle was going. Finally there are six more chapters, each on a Civil War battle where acoustic phenomena may have played a significant role. Overall it is an excellent book and will be a great asset to those who have an interest in the Civil War.

>20 jztemple: That one sounds intriguing.

I'm still slogging through World War I, but I've already learned more about Austrian army and Turkish army actions than I think I've read before.

In addition to the Nimitz biography, this month I finished a re-read of The Wager and listened to two Vietnam audiobooks, We Were Soldiers Once... and Young: Ia Drang - The Battle That Changed the War in Vietnam and Whispers in the Tall Grass. The memoirs were helpful in understanding individual roles and battles, and the Brokhausen memoir also engaging/entertaining, but I think my next Vietnam book will be Reporting Vietnam, Part 1: American Journalism, 1959-1969 (Library of America). Will be starting Charles Lockwood's Hellcats of the Sea tonight.