The Millionaires’ Mob
601 (County of London) Squadron Auxiliary Air Force were nicknamed the “millionaires’ mob” by other squadrons. Seen by many as rich young playboys who used the Auxiliary Air Force as a “gentleman’s flying club” I found this incredibly interesting and so I wondered whether this theme was common across all of the AAF squadrons in the country. My research tested this theory, and is available to buy in my new book, The Territorial Air Force.
Even modern buses can manage twenty years in service if there are enough of them on aggregate. The Dennis Trident in London achieved that milestone, the last examples coming off service in 2019 after two respectable decades carrying Londoners around the city.
THE CANAL BUILDERS
This book might never have happened at all, if my writing careers had gone the way I first intended. I left a career in publishing in order to write full time in 1979 and I started out as a humourist. My first book, A Programmed Guide to Office Warfare, was a success – hard back and paper back in Britain and America and translated into other languages – I have an incomprehensible to me copy of the Japanese book. But my next effort, The Jones Report, sank without causing a ripple on the surface of the literary world. My agent Murray Pollinger then asked a very pertinent question: “What is the book you have read in the past year that you wished you had written yourself?” My answer was The Railway Navvies by Terry Coleman. The next question was obvious: was there a similar subject that interested me? My wife and I had already taken to enjoying canal holidays and I had become increasingly interested in their history. One element that seemed to be lacking was any information about the people who had constructed them. There were biographies of the main engineers, but very little about anyone else – their hard-working assistants, the administrators, the contractors and, of course, the navvies. I wrote an outline and Murray got me a very good contract, for what was to become The Canal Builders.
Do you want to know more about this book and the German way of war, tune in to one of my webinars, the first will be on the 30th of March. The webinar starts at 19.00 GMT or 20.00 on the continent and will last about 1.5 hour. Mail your name and email address to: jjbrouwer@cincmc.nl. If you have any questions please mail them also, so I can customise the program. Your questions are also welcome during the presentation.
Jaap Jan Brouwer
We had so much fun taking The Real Coco Chanel on a bookstagram tour! Here are the highlights….
Gresley and Thompson – A Controversy Analysed and Untangled
THE GERMAN WAY
The German Army lost two consecutive wars and the conclusion is often drawn that it simply wasn’t able to cope with its opponents. This image is constantly reinforced in literature and in the media, where seemingly brainless operating German units led by fanatical officers predominate. Nothing was as far from the truth. The records show that the Germans consistently outfought the far more numerous Allied armies that eventually defeated them: their relative battlefield performance was at least 1.5 and in most cases 3 times as high as that of its opponents. The central question in this book is why the German Army had a so much higher relative battlefield performance than the opposition. A central element within the Prussian/German Army is Auftragstaktik, a tactical management concept that dates from the middle of the nineteenth century and is still very advanced in terms of management and organization. In this series of blogs we will have a closer look at the key elements of Auftragstaktik and cases that will illustrate the effects of these elements in the reality of the battlefield. In this part of the series we focus on Kampfgruppen.
The starting point for this book was my own experience as a young cadet with P&O in the early 1960s. During bridge watches at night, and often during the day, it was quite routine to call up passing ships with the Aldis signal lamp and I remember the 3rd Officer during the First Watch (8-12) one night asking me to ‘call up that ship’. “What do I say?” I ask him. “Start with ‘What Ship, Where Bound?’” came the reply. And so I did, almost certainly with some first-time nerves; sending Morse by lamp is easy but reading it takes practice and I cannot recall with clarity what the outcome was, but the opening question has stayed with me and eventually became the title of this book.
THE GERMAN WAY OF WAR. A LESSON IN TACTICAL MANAGEMENT: MEN AND TEAMS
The German Army lost two consecutive wars and the conclusion is often drawn that it simply wasn’t able to cope with its opponents. This image is constantly reinforced in literature and in the media, where seemingly brainless operating German units led by fanatical officers predominate. Nothing was as far from the truth. The records show that the Germans consistently outfought the far more numerous Allied armies that eventually defeated them: their relative battlefield performance was at least 1.5 and in most cases 3 times as high as that of its opponents. The central question in this book is why the German Army had a so much higher relative battlefield performance than the opposition. A central element within the Prussian/German Army is Auftragstaktik, a tactical management concept that dates from the middle of the nineteenth century and is still very advanced in terms of management and organization. In this series of blogs we will have a closer look at the key elements of Auftragstaktik and cases that will illustrate the effects of these elements in the reality of the battlefield. In this part of the series we focus on men and teams.
The Power and the Glory; Royal Navy Fleet Reviews From Earliest Times To 2005
In November 2020, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that he wants to make the UK the ‘foremost naval power in Europe’ as part of a multi-billion pound boost to defence spending. The PM vowed to ‘restore Britain’s position as the foremost naval power in Europe’. He added: ‘If there was one policy which strengthens the UK in every possible sense, it is building more ships for the Royal Navy.’
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