What are you reading right now?
 

I'm on page 484 of Robert K Massie's Castles of Steel, an account of the naval conflict between Germany and Great Britain during the first world war. Right now I'm reading about the Dardanelles campaign (that's Gallipoli for everyone else :)) and I'm looking forward to reading Massie's take on Jutland. I should be done in a few days and I'll post a review shortly afterwards.

I've spent the last 50 pages muttering to myself "this is a bad idea, this is a bad idea!" I mean, sending a battleship squadron through the Dardanelles, blasting away at Turkish forts as they go, and sending trawlers in at night to clear mines under heavy fire? Something was bound to go wrong! I have to say Winston Churchill isn't coming across all that great right now...:nope:

Now I reading is
"Igou dai 366 sensuikan funsenki dongame taiheiyou wo iku"
This mean is(The record of I-366 submarine Fight desperately)
Written by Katsutake Ikeda.

And
"I17sen funsenki"
This mean is (The record of I-17 submarine Fgiht desperetely)
written by Genji Hara.

I-366 as you know, suplly submarine.
By this book saying ,They don't have torped tube because
this submarine for shipping suplly things for isolated island.
So when they saw big American convoy,they have to dive and hide.
Writter says how they wish to sink them but they dosent have any torped.
After that operation I-366 carrying surside submarine "Kaiten".
And they had launched "Kaiten" Only 4days before war ended.


I-17 was well kown as first submarine where fire ammo directly to American mainland.
Writter was worked as watch crew and radio crew.
He saying how submarine crew anxiety when captain transfered to another
ship.
They thought next captain will worth to die with him and worth to fight with him.

Katsutake Ikeda: No match in Amazon
I guess that means no English version. :cry:

Iron Coffins. Again. For about the millionth time. Find something new in it every time I pick it up. :up:

i've been reading

"Execution for Duty"
"the life, trail and murder of a U-Boat Captain"

by Peter Hansen


it's a little confusing as i'm not entirely sure why most of the book deals with a captain not specifically related to the main plot--but it's doesn't really matter as it is a good read---is historically accurate (one has to assume any way) and is quite a complex attempt to explain in detail exactly what happened and why the Captain in question was executed-including court documents and lots of details--

it's getting a little hard work now as i near the end dealing the period after the war--as it is tracing the officials and characters involved in the case and their roles in government and industry--it's all getting rather complicated and a tadge "Boys from Brazil"

A great book, just don't take everything in it to be 100% accurate...:yep:

SSN. Strategies for Submarine Warefare. Tom Clancy.

Hunt For Red October

I just love this book tobad we can't make a great dw campaign for it iwth nice models

The Price of Admiralty (John Keegan) - stepping away from the submarine genre for a spell.:)

Great book. I keep meaning to buy that. Got it out the library a year or so ago and I'm itching to read it again.

I should have three books arriving tomorrow;
"Donitz: The Last Fuhrer" by Peter Padfield
"Second U-boat Flotilla" by Lawrence Paterson
"Hunt and Kill: U-505 and the U-boat War in the Atlantic" by Theodore P. Savas

Can't wait. Biding time re-reading "Business in Great Waters" by John Terraine.

Okay, now I'm on Page 668 of Castles of Steel, just 120 more pages to go. I just read about the Battle of Jutland. It seems like both Beatty and Jellicoe made mistakes that affected the outcome of the battle. Also, I find it kind of funny that the Germans considered it a victory after they ran back to port and their fleet never left again. :doh:

Well, they sank more ships, didn't they?

I'm not "reading" anything right now, but I spend a couple of hours every day inside my reference books:
Jutland, An Analysis Of The Fighting, by John Campbell (a Jutland book for bean counters)

Naval Weapons Of World War Two, by same

Jane's and Conway's ship series

Warship Quarterly (now yearly) by Conway

The Battleship Dreadnought, by John Roberts (a book for rivet counters)

World War II, Day By Day, from Time-Life

World War I, Day By Day, by I don't remember who

Three different Civil War Day By Day books

British Battleships, 1889-1904, by RA Burt

U.S. Cruisers, by Norman Friedman

German Destroyers Of World War Two, by MJ Whitley

The U-Boat War: 1914-1918, by Edwin Gray

Yes, I have my nose in most of them almost every day.

Here's one I've had for a while but still haven't read: Psychological Factors In Submarine Warfare, by the US Navy Department.

Patrick O´Brian : Desolation island

Adrian Goldsworthy,John Keegan : Roman warfare

And i am planning to purchase : R. Cameron Cooke : Rise to victory,heard good things about it in forums

Two books for me.

Stealth at Sea: The History of the Submarine
A Time To Die: The Kursk disaster


I highly recommend both. Was pleased to see our man Drebbel mentioned in the first book :up:

Lol, yeah...According to one U-boat skipper who read it:" If I used a red pen to mark out every inaccuracy it would look like a bloodbath!" :D

But even so. I tend to read these books less for the accuracy of the technical and - i suppose - military history aspect and more as examinations of the reactions and actions of men put into a situation i hope to god i never have to emulate.

It is the same reason I like Das Boot so much. even though a lot of the attitudes in that novel seem to clash with the more expected confidence of U-boat crews during what was still very much a period of sucess (late '41) and also the feeling that Das Boot, to me at least, seems coloured by a Post-War understanding of what took place, it still seems to me quite an honest description of life aboard the boats where long periods of drudgery and filth are broken by bursts of instense fear and horror.

Likewise, I think Iron Coffins does a fairly good job of showing what life was like in a period where most U-boats that went out on patrol simply weren't going to be coming back again.