What books do you read

[chuft]

I read these too back in the day

[BRBFBI]

I read these too back in the day

All the one's I've read are nonfiction, the best of which (U-977) was written by an actual author after extensive interviews with the crew, the rest being autobiographical. I'm not sure how I'd like a fictional account, but I'll probably give it a try. I wish I could borrow from your collection! My library system doesn't have them in physical form.

[chuft]

Those aren't in my collection, haven't been for many decades. Just pics from the internet. However any library should have access to interlibrary loan and be able to get almost anything if you are willing to wait a bit.


While fiction, keep in mind the books' author, Edward Beach, was an actual WW2 Pacific submariner. So the books are very authentic indeed. That was an advantage of many of the books written soon after the war - they were written by veterans of it.


I had always been under the impression Alien was made for $1 million, but apparently not. Info like that was a lot harder to come by before the internet that's for sure.


Any library system should be able to get volumes from this set if you are interested in a deep dive. I just gave this set away to someone a couple years ago because I was tired of lugging it around.


https://www.amazon.com/History-Unite.../dp/0762854316


particularly











The Atlantic ones concern the battle against the U-boats. The US Pacific submarine effort is covered in the various Pacific volumes by date.



There are other books as well. One thing to keep in mind is that a lot of the codebreaking stuff like Ultra was classified and not public knowledge until 1974.


I remember when I first saw this book in the store. Had a copy at one time.


The point being the authors of these histories either didn't know about Ultra, or weren't allowed to mention it. This distorts reality a bit, since a lot of things that happened due to Allied codebreaking, have to be explained away some other way as a coincidence, or a lucky break like a fishing boat seeing a U-boat or the like.

So weirdly the detailed accounts from the actual people who fought in them, are often missing crucial details because they were classified and the authors were either unaware, or restricted from talking about it.

I didn't know about the proximity fuse for a long time because it was classified until 1954, after many of the histories had been written. But it explains why the Japanese aircraft got so shredded in 1944 in the Great Mariannas Turkey Shoot.

[BRBFBI]

There are other books as well. One thing to keep in mind is that a lot of the codebreaking stuff like Ultra was classified and not public knowledge until 1974.


I remember when I first saw this book in the store. Had a copy at one time.


The point being the authors of these histories either didn't know about Ultra, or weren't allowed to mention it. This distorts reality a bit, since a lot of things that happened due to Allied codebreaking, have to be explained away some other way as a coincidence, or a lucky break like a fishing boat seeing a U-boat or the like.

So weirdly the detailed accounts from the actual people who fought in them, are often missing crucial details because they were classified and the authors were either unaware, or restricted from talking about it.

I didn't know about the proximity fuse for a long time because it was classified until 1954, after many of the histories had been written. But it explains why the Japanese aircraft got so shredded in 1944 in the Great Mariannas Turkey Shoot.

That is fascinating. Especially the ripple effects of published histories not including those classified details, such that even once they were declassified the effects of classification still lingers.

[chuft]

Yeah you can have your stuff written close to the event by people who were there and whose memories are fresh, or stuff written later with additional info having become available, but you can't have both in one volume. Serious study of history requires having a lot of sources, and building a picture of events in your head.

Eyewitness accounts can be perfectly reliable yet the eyewitness didn't know certain things and that is going to affect the overall description of the event. The US had a weather station in Greenland that gave advance notice of a break in bad weather and D-Day was waiting on that report. The Allied troops waiting in England did not know this, only the top command, so when they were ordered to go they had no idea the weather would suddenly improve just at the right time. The Germans did not know this either and had no advance warning. So one morning they woke up and were like

[chuft]

This is the picture I was originally trying to find but it took some effort to find it.