MortonC

Extremely detailed account of this daring raid

Reviewed: 01-17-25

I had just read the extraordinary tale of the Tobruk raid (SAS Ghost Patrol) and had been astonished at their daring and how gripping the story was. So, when I saw this similar tale of the St. Nazaire raid, I knew that I had to listen to it.

Overall, the details are excellent and you get to really "feel you are there". I appreciate that the author wanted to make the soldiers and sailors into "real people" and make them more than just two-dimensional actors, but there were almost too many details and it slowed down the story somewhat. The author was clearly a rugby jock and I found the continual references to "good looking, athletic, rugger player" to get really tedious.

It would have been nice to have received more details of the Germans and how they felt about the whole adventure, but this book was written in 1958 so that probably wasn't how people felt back then.

I found the "All the Frenchmen loved how the British blew up their premiere facilities" to be a tad... hopeful? I suspect that they were often more than a little peeved about their beloved docks being trashed for a long time. Otherwise, why wouldn't they have blown them up, when they first capitulated to the Germans (as one person notes).

Also, the jolly ruse played on the Germans and the Germans feeling that it has been "well played" is a tad hopeful, I think it's the title "D Day Through German Eyes" where the St. Nazaire Raid is often mentioned as an underhanded trick. I was quite surprised at the time and it reminded me that perspective is everything.


The audiobook starts with "The text refers to many diagrams but we didn't include them". Huh? Would a PDF have been that difficult? So locations are often a bit vague or confusing. But check out the Wikipedia page and the picture of the tiny HMS Cambeltown in the huge dock.

The narrator was 98% excellent; very clear and gave appropriate emphasis throughout. But painfully unfamiliar with military terms. I get that boatswain and coxswain are not obvious, but they only occurred a few times, so that wasn't an issue. And when he said "N.A.A.F.I." I thought "what is the N.A.... oh! the Naafi!" I've never heard anyone spell it out before. But again, it only came up once. But the Oerlikon gun must have been said at least one hundred times and that became really annoying. To me, with a clearly non-English word, the obvious professional choice would have been for the narrator to ask someone "This is an odd word, how should I say it?" Instead, we had to suffer oh-er-lie-kon over and over... frustrating.

So, overall, I would say it's an excellent telling of a dramatic and daring raid. I found a number of times that I was shocked at how selfless and brave the soldiers and sailors were.

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Stream of disconnected facts

Reviewed: 01-07-25

I have listened to dozens of Great Courses titles and this is only the second or third time that I have given up on a course.

My wife has a PhD in banana-DNA and I thought it would be interesting to learn more about her field. Unfortunately, I found this course to be a stream of disconnected facts, rather then building into quality learning. "Here's this! Here's that!" Ok, so how do those facts now build into some behavior or ability? I really didn't hear that.

I have listened to a whole book on DNA in the past but found the DNA lecture in this course to be, you guessed it, a breathtaking rush through a series of facts without them truly building into anything.

By Lecture 4, my patience had been exhausted and I gave up. Maybe the later lectures start tying it all together, but I doubt it.

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Excellent history and narration

Reviewed: 12-20-24

This book, at least mentions, every mission and loss that the 381st Bomb Group had during WWII. So you get a real sense of the grinding, never-ending task ahead of them.

There is a fair amount of detail, but you feel like someone is telling you after they come back from a mission, rather than being on the mission yourself. I would have really liked one or two missions to have done a deep-dive on every aspect of what the crew did and how they felt from takeoff to landing. I feel that would have really helped to make the story more immersive. Listen to Vulcan 609 and you'll see what I mean.

I did like the "interludes" which gave insights into specific aspects of being a bomber group and didn't necessarily fit with the chronological tale, so they were a great idea. But again, more details would have been a boon. For example, bombers would take off and take about an hour to form up. Ok, so that makes me think... how did they do that without losing formation or colliding? Come to that, how do you keep your position in formation? I'm guessing that you'd line up the other aircraft with your parts on your own plane, but I don't know for sure. And how does a unit make a 90 degree turn and still keep its formation?

In another book, Hell's Angels, they mention how the ground crew would rotate the propeller a few times before starting the engine, to draw the oil up into the pistons. Oh... so that's why they do that! And so on.

So many of the B-17s would be have issues and then explode but it's not explained why. Maybe it was fire in the fuel tanks but it's not really explained or why there wasn't a solution to this.

David De Vries gives another stellar performance and really makes the entire book even more engaging with how he gives appropriate emphasis on the text.

At 19 hours, this book covers a lot and is definitely worth the time -- I just wish it was even longer!

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Excellent insights into Soviet WWII airforce

Reviewed: 12-20-24

This is the first memoire that I have seen from a Soviet WWII pilot, so it gives particularly rare and valuable insights into what they went through.

They certainly didn't receive much combat training or apparent concern for their wellbeing (which is rather consistent with their army compatriots). They were just sent off on their first missions with the barest of instruction or guidance for how to complete the mission. How anyone could survive the high losses is just astounding.

This book goes into a lot of detail about specific missions and what Vasily experienced on them, which is great. I would have been happy to have heard about more missions, but I'm thankful for the ones we have.

It's also interesting to see the pilots' view of the IL-2, which German accounts say they had to shoot the oil pan in order to down one, but the Soviets say how the entire back half of the airplane was vulnerable.

The actual writing isn't the best and I feel that better translation and editing could have made the tales even more engaging. I found myself losing focus quite often, due to the rather dry writing style. As another reviewer noted, it gets a bit confusing when the author jumps around in the perspective of who's telling the story or the timeline.

The psychic pet dog is amazing and is a delightful tale.

I highly recommend this book if you'd like to learn more about the experiences Soviet pilots during WWII.

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Are we there yet?

Reviewed: 12-07-24

The basic story was good and played out well.

But I did get tired of the repeating loop: "Oh no, we have a crisis! We're all doomed!" "Phew, we solved the crisis". "Oh no, we have a crisis...".

By around two-thirds of the book, I was rather over it all and just felt "Are we there yet?"

Ray Porter, as always, was an absolutely stellar narrator!

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Excellent history, more 'life details' wanted

Reviewed: 12-07-24

As my father was a pilot on Lancasters in WWII, I am always interested to learn more about what they did and what it was like for them.

I would have preferred a lot more "trivial little details of everyday life" to have been included. All the little stuff about what it was like to be on a Lancaster mission, or simply to be in one for such extended periods. I suspect that the crews dismiss those details as obvious or unimportant -- but really, we don't know them and would love to! I suspect that many of the small details have faded from memory also.

For example, what was the food like in the mess? People like to complain about military food, but when I was at RAF stations around 1980, I thought it was uniformly excellent.

Here's the sort of trivia I like... A story from my dad was that when they first joined up, a friend of his was terribly posh and brought his high quality porcelain teacup to the mess. He was so excited to have joined the RAF, and when talking with another (not posh but obviously unfriendly) airman over dinner, he offered "Cheers" and went to clink with the other guy, who had a regular mug of tea. The other guy slammed his mug into the friend's teacup really hard, hoping to break the porcelain teacup. Instead, the regular mug shattered, leaving the unfriendly completely stunned and just staring at the remaining handle of his mug.

Anyway... the book cover says that it's the story of a Lancaster Bomber Crew, which I was hoping for. But it would estimate that about two-thirds of it actually covers the strategic bomber campaign and large raids, which I happen to know about from other books. If he had to add these aspects to give context and to fill out the book, because he was low on details about the crew themselves, then I get it. But if some crew-details were squeezed out to make space for the strategic story, then I would have preferred 'the authors cut' with the additional details left in, and a longer book.

I found that a few author or narrator choices were a bit distracting for me, but they were minor. He refers to them looking for a fuel leak with torches. My goodness, that sounds dangerous! Oh wait, he means flashlights. Got it. Which reminds me of another story from my dad... it was a dark night and there was a puddle of liquid under a fuel bowser but they couldn't see where it was coming from. Is it fuel or water? One of them said "I'll strike a match so we can see better" - the others jumped him before he could actually act on the idea...

A little after D-Day, the narrator says they are going on a raid to Cannes, which was an important intersection for both sides. Gosh, that's a long way, Cannes (pronounced Cann) is in the south of France, so... we're doing a raid to support the upcoming Operation Dragoon? After a bit more context... ohhh, he means Caen (pronounced Con). Yes, both sides beat that Norman city to pieces. But his other city names were pronounced just fine.

If you want more details about the Mosquito Pathfinders of 627 Squadron, read the author's book "Mosquito Men", also on Audible.

I guess I'll end by reverting to my wish that each mission-story was about five to ten times longer, with more small details. It was still a great book though and well worth a credit.

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Great account of 73 Easting with significant depth

Reviewed: 12-07-24

I'm always interested in the Battle of 73 Easting because my friend was there and even in Ghost Troop.

Mike Guardia gives significant depth to the people involved, and we get to know them a lot better than in most histories, so this account means a lot more to the listener. The extra detail also allows us armchair warriors to get some insights into what military life is really like, which is a bonus.

Mike covers much of the same ground as the Eagle Troop book (Fires of Babylon) but somehow manages to give the story a new spin, so it doesn't feel like a repeat of the prior book. Very well done!

Yes, most of the book is leading up to the 100 hours war and the battle itself, which is fair. Though I was disappointed that the battle description was a bit confusing and I was unclear on exactly who was where, etc.

One story not in the book came from my friend (Coyote of MechWarrior2, Eridani Light Horse). He said that their Abrams' turret had been hit by a 125mm shell from a T72 and bounced off with a really loud BONG! He said the crew were all temporarily deafened by it, so I asked what they did next and he said they turned their helmet radios up to max volume and made-do. It was always thought-provoking to be playing an online game in something like tanks with someone who had done it for real.

So anyway, there are many books about Vietnam now, but not many about Desert Storm. If you'd like to learn insights about what it was like to be there and what our army of 1991 was life, I highly recommend this history.

Telson

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Another excellent addition to the Bobiverse story

Reviewed: 09-21-24

We had to wait a painful four years for the next installment of the Bobiverse story... and thankfully, it was worth it!
I had forgotten so much of the story-so-far (the Starfleet War? What Starfleet War?) that I had to go back and re-listen to Heaven's River. Ok, so maybe that wasn't a hardship, other than me being impatient to get on with this new title.

I often enjoy listening to interesting audiobooks and this one went over-and-above in terms of me finding every excuse to make time to listen to more of the story, so I must have found it highly engaging.

Uh, it's hard to explain without giving spoilers. There's lots of traditional space exploration, which is always fun. Lots of Bob interactions and politics. More exploring Bob-human dynamics. The dragons were Ok but felt like a "filler story" and a bit two-dimensional.

At the end of Book3, I felt that the author had wrapped up the series and I was disappointed.
No spoilers, but let's just say that's no longer a concern. :-)

The narrator, Ray Porter, delivers another outstanding performance. I find myself wondering whether the author leaves hints for where to place emphasis, or if Ray does a ton of prep and figures it out for himself. Either way, his narration significantly enhances already excellent writing.

As others have said... don't down-rate the *story* because you're annoyed with publishing decisions over which format comes out first.

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1 person found this helpful

Clearly describes life in an LRRP unit

Reviewed: 09-10-24

I felt that this book gave a "good" description of life in an LRRP unit. Not great but nothing annoying about it, either.
I think that was due to the writing being a bit bland, not the story, per se.

Yes, it's narrated by Virtual Voice, but I was surprised how good VV was. I was very surprised how human and realistic it sounds. Again, it's not great and doesn't know when to give emotion or intonation, but it's not bad either. I can think of *certain human narrators* would I would love to see replaced by Virtual Voice. VV doesn't make the faux pas that you would expect (e.g. knowing which of the various ways to pronounce the word 'read') but you could tell when edits had been spliced in, so maybe they were corrections of such instances. Which is odd... why can we tell when they splice in a fix? Talking of odd things and realism, you can even hear when Virtual Voice turns the page! Hey... think about that...

So anyway, if you'd like to learn more about the LRRPs in Vietnam, this is definitely worth your time.

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Wow, incredibly gripping and entertaining

Reviewed: 09-10-24

I have been an Audible member for 20+ years and it has been a long time since I found a book this captivating!

I was a little familiar with the Vulcan raid during the Falklands War, thanks to it being briefly covered in Vulcan Boys. Although excellent, that book was telling many stories and it wasn't the place to go into extreme detail. Thankfully, Vulcan 607 and Rowland White have rectified that!

There is a tremendous amount of detail, and so it's a testament to both the author and narrator that this is presented in a way that is fascinating and really enables you to feel that you're there and a part of the crew, without becoming tedious. It includes many of the details of squadron life or in-flight happenings that are rarely covered, so you get deeper insights of what it must be like to be active aircrew.

I knew they had performed in-flight refueling but had not appreciated how this was new for the Vulcans (both crew and their equipment) and the number of items they had to scrounge from a myriad of sources.

I really hope that the White/McMillan team write/narrate a lot more tales from RAF pilots as they really bring the stories to life.

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