Bruships 24 - An Autobiography from War

Why Slim's memoir is valuable for its unsanitised account of Burma, command decisions, air supply, and the human costs of campaigning.

Slim's memoir shows how prepacked supplies, airfield labour, transport, and troop-carrier planning let an encircled division continue fighting.

He suggests Eskimo, Cossack, Nubian, Ashanti, Gurkha, and Sikh, while noting that the class might instead follow a county naming scheme.

A memoir extract follows an officer's Somaliland service, showing how personal accounts preserve the texture of campaigns beyond the main theatres.

Carleton de Wiart's memoir contrasts an older wait-for-attack method with a deliberate advance by Somali troops against fortified Dervish positions.

A pilot's account of the Taranto strike explains the selection of crews, night-flying risk, and the preparations behind the Fleet Air Arm raid.

The raid formed part of a moving Mediterranean Fleet operation that reinforced Malta, covered convoys, and fought off Italian reconnaissance and bombers.

The memoir details the duplex pistols, depth and speed settings, short safety run, and anti-porpoising cable used for the harbour strike.

He suggests that more than roughly nine destroyers per capital ship can become counterproductive because the screen starts to crowd the capital ship's movement.

He would choose one R-class battleship for roughly two Tribal flotillas, while retaining the rest because their presence still discouraged surface raiders from attacking convoys.

He would prioritise ships that arrived with their support infrastructure, use Canadian and Australian manpower where practical, and accept a long work-up period rather than treating the fleet as instantly usable.

The suitable destroyer-scale dual-purpose mounting was not yet mature, while the available capital-ship-style mount was difficult to integrate into the class.

He would expect it to standardise on the most modern design available, because that would best reflect current Japanese thinking.

The Dominion navies already had trained personnel and institutions, whereas new exile navies would need to build those foundations and should begin with smaller ships.

About eight might have a plausible chance and sixteen a good one, but he only reaches thirty-two when asked to guarantee the result.

The newest cruisers and destroyers could have expanded Allied Mediterranean and Far East coverage, but their value would depend on sustaining crews, ammunition, and maintenance.

It could have strengthened the raid enough to keep more of the Italian fleet out of effective action for longer.

He favours Norwegian, Greek, and Danish destroyers, but not obsolete and largely unmodernised Greek pre-dreadnoughts.

An early Hermes memoir captures the uneasy RAF-Royal Navy arrangement and the realities of carrier flying in China waters.

Hermes used aircraft for presence, reconnaissance, and anti-piracy work around Hong Kong, showing how carrier aviation served imperial policing as well as fleet battle.

A violent structural failure forced the Hermes pilot to fly back to Kai Tak with only ailerons and tail trim, illustrating the hazards of early naval aviation.

Casper John's reading list leads to Ransome's contemporary books as unusually informed outsider accounts of revolutionary Russia.

Yes. He sees them as useful coastal-convoy escorts that could have freed larger British destroyers for more demanding work.

He envisages two or three CVA-01 carriers, a much larger Type 82 escort force, and later enlarged Daring-class successors built around carrier protection.

Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales are his leading choices, with Ark Royal more plausible than Duke of Edinburgh for a third ship.

Probably not. Britain would value an inspection, but a single German raider would be difficult to supply, identify, and employ effectively.

He expects Buccaneers and Phantoms with E-2 Hawkeye airborne early warning initially, followed by F/A-18 Hornets rather than a costly naval Tornado conversion.

Possibly, but mass-produced six-inch cruisers fitted contemporary needs better; earlier knowledge of battleship retirement would have strengthened the case for 9.2-inch ships.

The Royal Navy had enough prepared names for an expanded Tribal-class programme and had considered ordering more of the class.

An attempt might appear around 1946-47, but the liquid-oxygen plant and handling burden would make it a difficult shipboard weapon.

The battleship exceeded available heavy-maintenance facilities, so unresolved major work made routine upkeep progressively harder even though the cruiser was handled better.

The later war was more globally dispersed and required a larger Fleet Air Arm, shore establishment, and commando structure as well as more ships and convoy work.

It was the Royal Navy's planned large catapult carrier intended to succeed Eagle and Ark Royal, but it was cancelled in the 1960s as Britain moved away from those carriers.

Albright's memoir uses ASEAN performance rituals and a joint skit with Russia's foreign minister to show informal diplomacy easing difficult relationships.

He chooses a checked Panzer IV over a Tiger I for reliability, but would consider a proven serviceable Tiger II.

A civil-service memoir explains how the Admiralty's senior permanent official reshaped financial and administrative machinery after the First World War.

The ability to move infantry and supplies behind an armoured advance depended on a scale of motor transport Germany never matched.

Wesley Clark's memoir shows how host-nation access, vulnerable observers, mixed command arrangements, and carrier availability shaped the opening of the Kosovo campaign.

Wesley Clark's memoir shows how a small host state could shape a coalition campaign by controlling the ground routes and airspace NATO needed.

The risk that Serbian forces might seize more than a thousand unarmed monitors exposed the limits of NATO's forced-entry options before the air campaign.

Sub-Lieutenant follows a junior officer into wartime naval training, HMS Tartar, and the hunt for Bismarck.

Kennedy's memoir preserves his father's pride in converting Rawalpindi for war and the personal cost behind the armed merchant cruiser's final action.

Kennedy's memoir condenses the rapid conversion of a civilian recruit into a naval officer through navigation, weapons, signals, Morse, and field training.

They learned the technology as well as signalling procedure, alongside specialist signalmen and other trained personnel.

Edward Ashmore's memoir shows a Malta convoy under concentrated air and surface threat, including the limits of its destroyer escort.

Once the distant cover withdrew, Cairo and nine destroyers had to screen the convoy, absorb sustained bombing, and turn toward an Italian cruiser force without abandoning Malta-bound shipping.

The extended-range tank sat in the rear cockpit and could leak, leaving the observer or air gunner surrounded by aviation fuel while exposed to combat damage and tracer fire.

Action This Day explains the tactical bind of Malta support and illustrates Vian's preference for turning unavoidable exposure into offensive action.

Anderson's personal chances are left open. A 1943 invasion would have faced a much less worn-down German force and therefore been considerably harder.

A destroyer officer's memoir moves from Malta operations to Sicily and the careful escort of surrendered Italian submarines.

The Italian armistice created an unusual identification problem: surrendered submarines had to travel on the surface without being mistaken for hostile boats.

Cunningham's memoir shows the difficult effort to prevent French ships at Alexandria from becoming Axis assets without immediately destroying them.

He would favour Fraser for strategic command and Vian for operational action, while acknowledging that the available British carrier and battleship force would still constrain the plan.

He believes it could have been avoided if French command had acted decisively or communicated its options clearly; the Caribbean was a serious alternative already under consideration.

Their main effect was on sustaining continuous aircraft operations for presence missions, which then influenced later exercises more than direct combat doctrine.

Because her patrol duties could leave her far from cruiser support and exposed to a surface raider, so the guns gave her a measure of self-defence.

He names Collingwood, Ramsay, Henderson, and Sherbrooke among others, valuing the perspectives they could offer beyond the most famous naval biographies.

Yes. Blockade was the preferred approach, but invasion planning existed as a contingency and would have involved a very broad Allied force.

Crete's defence needed water security, cultivated ground, and a road to the safer coast before invasion made those projects impossible.

The statement is an exaggeration, but the fleet was critical in bridging the shortage before American mass-produced merchant ships arrived in large numbers.

They often had to provide continuous fleet air defence before and after a strike, so aircraft could not all be committed at once without exposing the force.

Yes in principle, but it would be exceptionally large, heavy, and expensive.

He finds the argument incomplete because European war arrived in the wrong order for British planning and neither Britain nor the Dominions had built enough forces to meet every demand at once.

Potentially Fourteenth Army, backed by a supply route that could strengthen Chinese forces and sustain more effective B-29 operations from China.

The expected seaborne threat led to armour-piercing ammunition and unsuitable defensive priorities; more high-explosive ammunition and dual-purpose guns could have been more useful.

They believed they still had strategic surprise and felt they had to gamble offensively before the United States could build up further strength.

He would have held it at Ceylon until the decisive threat emerged, then concentrated it with other Allied naval forces to complicate Japanese operations and buy time.

The reservoir was a key logistical asset. Its loss prevented repairs to disrupted water supply and weakened a garrison that might otherwise have outlasted Japanese shortages and counterattacked.

No. The structural reinforcement needed for repeated carrier landings would impose significant cost and performance penalties on aircraft that only need to operate from land bases.

Market Garden shows how enthusiasm for one operational method can crowd out complementary approaches.