Ambush Valley and Cold War Gone Hot are the latest additions to the Ambush Alley Games/Osprey line of Force on Force wargaming rules. My wife bought both for me at Crisis 2011 in Antwerp. Ambush Valley is 180 pages in full color. It contains theater-specific rules and six scenarios, but […]
Tom Clancy is of course best known for his Jack Ryan series of novels. He also published a number of non-fiction books describing US military units: Nuclear submarines, Air Force fighter wings, an Armored Cavalry Regiment, a Marine Expeditionary Force, an Airborne division, an aircraft carrier, and Special Forces. I […]
In The Age of Airpower, Martin van Creveld writes about the history and development of airpower. The book is divided into five parts: The beginnings, World War II, the Cold War, smaller wars from 1945 on, and what he calls “war amongst the people”, i.e. counterinsurgency warfare. As such, it […]
The Star Wars universe was somewhat dormant in the early 1990s. It had been eight years since Return of the Jedi, with new material being mostly limited to the source books published by West End Games for the Star Wars roleplaying game. Then, in 1991, came Heir to the Empire, […]
In Street without Joy, Bernard Fall describes and analyses France’s failure in the First Indochina War, focusing on the second half (1950-1954). Based on his personal experiences and thorough research both in French and Vietnamese archives (he met and interviewed Ho Chi Minh during one of his visits to North […]
Chickenhawk, by Robert Mason, tells the story of a helicopter pilot in the Vietnam War. Mason had always wanted to fly and already held a private pilot’s license when he volunteered for the Army to fly helicopters. His flight training is recounted in the book. He is then assigned to […]
I have re-read two books by Stephen Coonts, Flight of the Intruder and The Intruders. They tell the story of Jake Grafton, a US Navy pilot flying the Grumman A-6 Intruder, during his second Vietnam war cruise in 1972 and a peacetime cruise in in 1972. Coonts was an Intruder […]
The use of Forward Air Controllers is an interesting aspect of aerial and ground warfare. Mosquitoes to Wolves by G.R. Lester describes how airborne FACs matured during the Korean War. Flying the T-6, the “Mosquitoes” directed close air support strikes and interdiction near the front line. Sadly, lessons learned in […]
I have recently finished reading The coming of the Third Reich by Richard J. Evans. The book is the first in a trilogy covering the rise and and fall of the Third Reich. This first book covers the period from 1871 (the beginning of the second German empire) to the […]
I have just finished reading Intelligence in War by John Keegan. The book covers the effect of intelligence on warfare from Napoleonic times to today. This is achieved by covering a number of campaigns that serve as an example: Nelson’s pursuit of the French fleet in the Mediterranean Stonewall Jackson’s […]
I’ve recently finished reading the first three books of the Barsoom series by Edgar Rice Burroughs. The Barsoom books are early 20th century pulp science fiction stories. The first three books center around John Carter, a man from Virginia who one day miraculously awakes on Mars. The books are full […]
[lang_nl]Een e-book reader is duur. Voor het offline lezen van websites of tekstdocumenten is er gelukkig nog een andere mogelijkheid: Een oude Palm III, in mijn geval een Palm IIIx. Deze heeft maar een klein scherm en 4 MB geheugen, maar voor tekst zonder plaatjes is dit voldoende. Als leesprogramma […]
