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      One Hundred Days by Admiral Sir Sandy Woodward 

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      Seaweed
      Published on 09-04-12 14:12  Number of Views: 802 
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      Admiral Woodward swallowed the anchor on retirement from office as CINCNAVHOME in 1989. This is the third edition; the first was published in 1992, which attracted sufficient comment for a second edition to appear in 2003. At that stage Woodward dealt with many received, or elsewhere printed, comments and applied some hindsight (his word). The preface to the second edition gives a ringing endorsement to Sharkey Ward both in achievement and analysis and emphasises how essential to global reach is organic maritime air power. The preface to the third edition says very little, except to explain, via Woodward’s 1982 Report of Proceedings, how our Government had comprehensively baited the hook for Galtieri. ...
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      ‘Beyond Endurance’ by Captain Nick Barker 

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      Seaweed
       Number of Views: 775 
      1. Categories:
      2. History,
      3. Memoire/Battlefield Memoire,
      4. Naval,
      5. Non-Fiction
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      Si vis pacem, para bellum
      Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus, De Re Militari, book 3
      ‘What war?’
      Anthony Williams, HM Ambassador to Argentina, 1.4.82 (allegedly)

      There will be many books published and re-published to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of our victory in the Falklands. This is the one to start with.
      Command of the Ice Patrol Ship must have been the most unusual Captain’s job in the Royal Navy. Besides a conventional naval presence - in an area where Defence Diplomacy presents unusual challenges, and relating to a continent where national jurisdiction is not well defined - there was support to be given to the British Antarctic Survey, the Scott Polar Institute, and other scientific bodies, and continuing hydrographic tasks for which the ship was additionally equipped. The 1980 HMS Endurance also carried an intelligence gathering suite in advance of anything in any other British warship, and its manning included fluent Spanish speakers. In 1980-2 there was also support needed for several BBC and other filming projects. There was a responsibility to the Governor of the Falkland Island Dependencies which included taking the Governor on an annual tour of his parish. The MoD, the Department of Education and Science, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office jostled for priority, and presumably back in Whitehall reams of paper poured forth contesting funding for what, although basically unarmed, was from 1975 to 1982 the only regular British warship presence in the entire southern hemisphere. Barker explains all this and, even without the war which comes upon him in the second half of the book, he provides an entertaining and comprehensive guide to this (to most of us) unfamiliar area.
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      The white house connection by Jack Higgins 

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      (granny)
       Number of Views: 570 
      1. Categories:
      2. Non-Naval
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      This book, being my first glimpse into the world of Sean Dillon, seemed to be a little too slick. Maybe if I had started reading the ‘Sean Dillon’ books when they were first published, I might have a better understanding of the mind set of the characters involved. As it is I was left trying to understand the motivations behind the plot.

      An elderly Lady, armed with a Colt .25 fitted with a silencer, going around the streets of Manhattan. Two men attempting a rape, the dispatch of these two guys with well aimed shots, her stroll back to her Chauffeur driven limousine…. All in the first eight pages of this thriller.! This was going to be some journey.
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      ‘No Escape Zone’ by Nick Richardson 

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      Seaweed
       Number of Views: 675 
      1. Categories:
      2. History,
      3. Memoire/Battlefield Memoire,
      4. Naval,
      5. Non-Fiction
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      In 1994 the author was a Sea Harrier pilot in 801 Squadron aboard HMS Ark Royal in the Aegean. Responding to a request for support from the ground, he was shot down over Bosnia on 16th April. This is the gripping story of the events leading up to that, and of his subsequent escape from a country hostile on every side, told by a man with his neck on the line both in the air and on the ground. It is a brilliant example of the can-do spirit of the Fleet Air Arm. It is also a salutary reminder of the usefulness of fixed-wing maritime air power.

      Richardson rightly points out that in 1994 the Sea Harrier was the only British fast jet capable of air defence, ground attack and reconnaissance, and that unlike RAF fast jet pilots those of the Fleet Air Arm were trained in all three roles so could be called upon for any task, indeed could swing roles in flight is appropriately armed. The FAA has its full share of the Royal Navy’s long tradition of willingness to go anywhere and do anything, and it’s people’s readiness to hop in and make one at the drop of a hat.
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      'Britannia to Beira and Beyond' by Mike Critchley 

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      Seaweed
       Number of Views: 521 
      1. Categories:
      2. History,
      3. Humour,
      4. Memoire/Battlefield Memoire,
      5. Naval,
      6. Non-Fiction
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      “Splendaciously mendacious rolled the Brassbound man ashore”
      (Kipling)

      As a youngster Mike Critchley, both of whose grandfathers had served in the Royal Navy, only ever wanted to go to sea. He entered Dartmouth in January 1963 and served, as a seaman officer, to 1974. He is familiar to many as a writer and broadcaster and is the founder of his successful publishing firm, Maritime Books.

      He has finally been persuaded to share some reminiscences of his naval career. The volume under review (150pp, A5 paperback) covers the first five years of his naval career in a variety of ships from Ark Royal (the old real one) down to a converted LCT, a coastal minesweeper and (briefly) an inshore.
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      'Mountbatten - Apprentice War Lord' by Dr Adrian Smith (IB Tauris). 

      by
      Seaweed
       Number of Views: 412 
      1. Categories:
      2. History,
      3. Memoire/Battlefield Memoire,
      4. Naval,
      5. Non-Fiction
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      Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
      Like a Colossus; and we petty men
      Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
      To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
      Men at some time are masters of their fates:
      The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
      But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
      (Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, 1.2.135)

      Dr Smith is an academic historian from the University of Southampton. He has mined the Broadlands archives to compile a memoir of Lord Mountbatten’s professional life.

      This is set in a context derived from many other sources including published biographies of Lord M and the memoirs of many contemporaries, superiors (especially Cunningham) and one-time subordinates. This is the first of maybe two or three volumes and takes the Life up to a focus on the Dieppe raid and then the planning for Overlord. In order to deal at length with Lord Mountbatten as a naval officer, his early life and gossip about his wife and marriage are only sketched in, although the author recognises that there has to be some background for anybody’s life to make sense. He rightly eschews the prurient does not, for instance, mention Edwina being carted off to hospital conjoined to ‘Hutch’.
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      'British Warships and Auxiliaries 1952' by Steve Bush 

      by
      Seaweed
       Number of Views: 888 
      1. Categories:
      2. History,
      3. Naval,
      4. Non-Fiction
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      Far-called our navies melt away—
      On dune and headland sinks the fire—
      Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
      Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
      Kipling, 'Recessional'

      To mark Her Majesty’s Diamond Jubilee, Maritime Press has produced a ‘1952’ edition of their regular product, British Warships and Auxiliaries. Although publication of this annual only started in 1979, this new volume has been written as if it had been compiled in 1952 and the author has successfully avoided including material that has come to notice since. So for the reader, it is as if he had gone back sixty years and purchased a ‘new’ book about the Royal Navy.

      While I was not yet serving in 1952, many of the ships listed were familiar in the years that followed, from Vanguard (half a day as a schoolboy) down to Reward (two bizarre weeks as an extra hand to do the astro).
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      'British Warships and Auxiliaries 2012' by Steve Bush 

      by
      Seaweed
       Number of Views: 668 
      1. Categories:
      2. History,
      3. Naval,
      4. Non-Fiction
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      The book is a compilation which has been produced on an annual basis by Maritime Books since 1979 and takes the form of a 112p A5 paperback. The 2012 edition is up to date to December 2011. It is complimentary to heavyweight works such as Jane’s in that it covers the Royal Navy only, but in greater depth.

      The author, who spent 22 years in the Royal Navy from 1978, opens with an entirely justified and scathing review of SDSR and its consequences for our maritime defences, and a review of the Libyan operation from a naval point of view, which ‘highlighted the sheer lunacy of the Government‘s assertion that it could mitigate the loss of LRMP through the use of other assets‘. The decommissioning of the type 22s is identified as ‘bringing to an end … the Royal Navy’s at-sea intelligence collecting capabilities’. BZ, Mr Bush. Not that the Government cares.

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