Three books to be published this year

13 Comments

1. It’s unfortunate the old KOSAVE contract didn’t include coverage beyond July ’43 and into the Red Army’s Rumyantsev offensive in August 1943. Surely you’d be working on that next, if the research had been possible back then.
   Nevertheless,, aside from a couple critical LII AK rolls, most of the German docs concerning Rumyantsev are available online for free. I’ve checked pamyat naroda, and presumably all of the Red Army docs are there.

   • I did ask for follow-on but the Army was not interested in funding it. It was a shame as we had access to the Soviet archives, a great collection of scholars and a unique opportunity to conduct research.

2. Was gonna ask what’s “The hunting falcon” about, but I see there’s already an amazon link https://www.amazon.com/Hunting-Falcon-German-Hans-Joachim-Buddecke/dp/1399085018

   • It is a translation of Hans Buddecke’s book with chapters interspersed that gives some background, discusses the bigger story and fills out the story. We end up writing more than he did.

     Hans Buddecke was the third German ace to win the Blue Max, after Immelmann and Boelcke.

     • Thanks.

3. After all those years waiting for the Kursk book I’m sure glad of this prolific streak 🙂

   • Well, I was proposing to various publishers that I crank out a Kursk/Kharkov book a year, but with COVID and all the other economic issues, I could not line up a publisher for a series of books.

     So ended up publishing Prokhorovka in the U.S., Aces at Kursk in the UK and then will probably do the Battle of Tolstoye with a U.S. publisher. Not sure if I will stop after that.

4. I saw this site (12oclockhigh.net) mentioned in a recent book on the British cross channel air offensive post Battle of Britain. The book had an extensive discussion of overclaims. What I found particularly interesting is that, with the Germans, it seems that it tended to trend in certain units, with certain commanders.

   http://forum.12oclockhigh.net/showthread.php?t=52289&page=3

   Given that the aces were given all sorts of real world rewards and attention, this is exactly what you would expect.

   In your Kursk book, you sited statistics from the unit records and such: wise choice. I saw in a recent book where the author (who was mostly focused on the ground campaign) used German Airforce records to record Polish loses. This was back when Amazon allowed comments under reviews. He got slaughtered. I guess the Germans shot down the Polish Air Force about 5x according to their records.

   • “I guess the Germans shot down the Polish Air Force about 5x according to their records.”

     That could be. However it does not change the larger picture: The German claims in Europe aginst the western allies were very close to the actual allied losses, in contrast, the allied claims are much higher than the german losses. This issue has been known for decades. And yes, the RAF overclaimed a lot over France for years.

     Do not try to make points with anecdotes when hard statistical data are available.

5. Man, you have got to stop making up nonsense. Kursk isn’t real, just like tooth fairy and queen of England.

   • Logic is a little tweeting bird chirping in a meadow.

6. Congratulations Chris on such great progress with your books. Looking at your Aces of Kursk has got me thinking … I’m curious about the nature of air warfare from the 1940’s, and how many lessons apply to the 2020’s. Some things are surprisingly similar, such as the effectiveness of AAA at low altitude. Other things seem to have changed significantly as technology has changed. Is this equally true for the Eastern Front, the Battle of Britain, and the Pacific Theater. It is also rather surprising that some Japanese fighters from WW2 have longer legs than some modern Allied fighter aircraft.

   Some aspects of warfare seem to be timeless, such as the effect of surprise:
   * in the IAF’s Operation Focus in 1967, when the weapons in play were mostly ordinary bombs and aerial cannon. Jets were faster than prop-planes, but weapons and sensors were pretty much the same.

   * in the Egyptian Operation Badr, crossing of the Suez in October 1973, and the technological surprise achieved by the SA-6 SAM and the Sagger Anti-Tank missile. The use of water cannon to clear the large sand mounds was also a big factor in surprise.

   * in the IAF’s Operation Mole Cricket 19 in 1982, in the rapid destruction of the Syrian air defenses in Lebanon’s Bekka Valley.

   The biggest effect of technology might be the drive to develop new technologies and tactics or doctrine as a means to achieve surprise. One could argue that the October surprise of 1973 spurred the US to initiate the stealth fighter program with HAVE BLUE as well as Active Defense, which later evolved to AirLand Battle. It spurred the IAF to find their own solution to the SAM threat, using new SEAD/DEAD weapons, tactics and technologies such as remotely piloted vehicles (RPVs … UAVs in today’s terms), ELINT and the improved aircraft and air-to-air missiles from the Americans (E-2C, F-15, F-16, AIM-7F and AIM-9L). Meanwhile, the Syrians largely had the same aerial OOB as they did in 1973 … SA-2, SA-3, SA-6, MiG-21 and some new MiG-23s / Su-20s.

   Curious about the applicability of analysis of the Pacific War air combat data to the modern battle field.

   • I have not looked at this but with two air books coming out, one on WWI and one on WWII… I think there would be some value of looking at the development over time of ground attack capabilities, air-to-air capabilities, and surface-to-air capabilities and how this shaped and changed combat. I am sure someone has done something on this, but I have not looked for it.