Best British War Films – A Bridge Too Far

Apologies to the makers of Saving Private Ryan, Das Boot, Cross of Iron and countless other great war films but this one is for the Brits, stiff upper lips, gritty realism and tally ho’s all round. That’s not to say of course, the films don’t include others but these are predominantly about Tom, Ginger and Andrew!

Film Description

This massive 1977 adaptation by director Richard Attenborough (Gandhi) of Cornelius Ryan’s novel features an all-star cast in an epic rendering of a daring but ultimately disastrous raid behind enemy lines in Holland during the Second World War. A lengthy and exhaustive look at the mechanics of warfare and the price and futility of war, the film is almost too large for its aims but manages to be both picaresque and affecting, particularly in the performance of James Caan. The impressive cast includes Robert Redford, Gene Hackman, Anthony Hopkins, Laurence Olivier, Dirk Bogarde, Sean Connery, and Liv Ullmann among others.

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Best British War Films – Where Eagles Dare

Apologies to the makers of Saving Private Ryan, Das Boot, Cross of Iron and countless other great war films but this one is for the Brits only. Stiff upper lips, gritty realism and tally ho’s all round.

Film Description
Richard Burton stars as Major John Smith, a British agent during WWII who is in charge a group of six Allied soldiers given the task of rescuing an American general–who is reportedly in possession of the plans for D-Day–from a seemingly impregnable German fortress located high in the Bavarian Alps. Assisting Smith is the sole American in the operative, Lieutenant Morris Schaffer (Clint Eastwood), a fierce soldier skilled with an array of deadly weapons. As the men penetrate the fortress, facing an endless supply of German soldiers, it becomes apparent that some members of the small Allied team may not be who them seem to be. Full of thrilling action set pieces, the screenplay was written by Alistair MacLean, adapted from his own best selling novel.

Best Bits
Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood’s performances are great, Excellent soundtrack and where else are you going to hear;

Broadsword calling Danny Boy

The film, done in 60 seconds

With a very handy Nazi death count

Go and buy it…

Best British War Films – The Longest Day

Apologies to the makers of Saving Private Ryan, Das Boot, Cross of Iron and countless other great war films but this one is for the Brits only. Stiff upper lips, gritty realism and tally ho’s all round.

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Book of the Week – Joint Force Harrier

About the Book
Afghanistan, October 2006: British soldiers are engaged in the most intense, sustained fighting they’d faced since the hell of the Korean War. Against a fierce, experienced and frighteningly motivated enemy, their lives too often depended on the success of danger-close, pin-point attacks pressed home from the air. But what most people back home didn’t know was that, during that violent winter, those attacks were being flown by the Royal Navy. When 800 Naval Air Squadron – callsign ‘Recoil’ – arrived in theatre, their Boss, Commander Adrian Orchard, knew there could be no slip ups. Day and night, the Fleet Air Arm crews were on constant alert, ready to scramble their heavily armed Harrier jets at a moment’s notice in support of men on the ground. The call wasn’t slow in coming. Just fifteen minutes after getting airborne for the first time, Orchard and his wingmen were in the thick of it, called in after an Apache helicopter gunship was forced back by heavy fire. The first book written by a serving British fast jet pilot since the 1991 Gulf War, Joint Force Harrier offers an unprecedented, heart-stopping insight into the realities of modern air warfare. The complexity and sophistication of the equipment may have moved on since the epic air battles of WWII, but it’s clear that the courage, skill and character of the men engaged in this brutal struggle for a country’s survival has not.

Best British War Films – Zulu

Apologies to the makers of Saving Private Ryan, Das Boot, Cross of Iron and countless other great war films but this one is for the Brits only. Stiff upper lips, gritty realism and tally ho’s all round.

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The Hurt Locker – UK Version

I saw this post at Mental Crumble which I thought was a great antidote to all the foaming and frothing about the Hurt Locker and how it has almost nothing to do with the reality of EOD operations.

This is our UK alternative?

Best British War Films – Guns at Batasi

Apologies to the makers of Saving Private Ryan, Das Boot, Cross of Iron and countless other great war films but this one is for the Brits only. Stiff upper lips, gritty realism and tally ho’s all round.

Film Description
Regimental Sergeant-Major Lauderdale is a spit-and-polish, by-the-book disciplinarian, who seems like a 19th Century anachronism in a sleepy peacetime African outpost of the modern British Commonwealth. He is ridiculed behind his back by his subordinate NCO’s and must play host to a liberal female MP making a tour of the base. However, when an ambitious African officer, who happens to be a protege of the MP’s, initiates a coup d’etat against Captain Abraham, the lawful African commandant, the resourceful RSM uses all his military training to arm his men despite being under house arrest and rescue the wounded commandant from a certain firing squad. When Lt. Boniface, the leader of the mutiny surrounds the sergeants mess with two Bofors guns, it looks like Lauderdale will have to surrender unless he again disobeys orders and takes the initiative
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Book of the Week – Submarine Technology

About the Book
The book is a survey of emerging technologies applicable to combat submarines, using worldwide sources

Book of the Week – Dunkirk

About the Book
The rescue in May 1940 of British soldiers fleeing capture and defeat by the Nazis at Dunkirk was not just about what happened at sea and on the beaches. The evacuation would never have succeeded had it not been for the tenacity of the British soldiers who stayed behind to ensure they got away. Men like Sergeant Major Gus Jennings who died smothering a German stick bomb in the church at Esquelbecq in an effort to save his comrades, and Captain Marcus Ervine-Andrews VC who single-handedly held back a German attack on the Dunkirk perimeter thereby allowing the British line to form up behind him. Told to stand and fight to the last man, these brave few battalions fought in whatever manner they could to buy precious time for the evacuation. Outnumbered and outgunned, they launched spectacular and heroic attacks time and again, despite ferocious fighting and the knowledge that for many only capture or death would end their struggle.

Book of the Week – The Circuit

About the Book
After nearly 20 years of SAS operations, including a never before published role in the infamous Bravo Two Zero patrol, Bob retired from the military to work as an advisor on the international commercial security circuit. Certain his most dangerous days were behind him, Bob settled into a sedate life looking after VIPs. Then 9/11 happened. Bob found himself back in war zones on assignments far more perilous than anything he had encountered in the SAS: from ferrying journalists across firing lines in The West Bank and Gaza to travelling to the heart of Osama bin Laden’s Afghan lair.As part of a two-man team, Bob searched for ITN Correspondent Terry Lloyd’s missing crew in Basra, Iraq, while in Afghanistan he was forced to spend the night as the only Westerner in Khost – with a $25,000 bounty on his head. As the War on Terror escalated, Bob contended with increasingly sophisticated insurgents. But the most disturbing development he witnessed was much closer to home: The Circuit’s rise from a niche business staffed by top veterans into an unregulated, billion dollar industry that too often places profits above lives. This is a pulse-racing and at times shocking testament to what is really happening, on the ground, in the major trouble spots of the world.

Book of the Week – The Operators

This is an account of life with 14 Intelligence Company – a British military intelligence unit established in 1972 to conduct covert surveillance operations against terrorist organisations (of all stripes) in Northern Ireland.

The unit is also known colloquially as ’14 Int’, and the ‘Det’ (because it is organised into ‘Detachments’). The events related in the book occurred in the 1980s, but the unit is reportedly still in existence.

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Book of the Week – Bomber Command

About the Book
Among the strongest images of World War II is that of waves of Allied bombers “striking at the heart” of Germany, reducing German cities to rubble and destroying the German will to fight. But of late the issue of the effectiveness of strategic bombing has become a contested one in Britain, and journalist Hastings’ contribution to the debate is a crippling blow to the carefully constructed myth of bomber warfare. Deftly interweaving stories of individual bomber groups with the machinations of strategy-making and the development of aircraft technology, Hastings gives a complete – and striking – picture of the Bomber Command at every level. He argues that the myth of bomber effectiveness was set before the outbreak of war; and despite the disastrous early bombing raids, with their high losses and missed targets, the myth died hard. He emphasizes the technological and strategic primitiveness that prevailed at that stage – the most pitiful example being the inability of the Wellington bombers to defend themselves against attack from the side, since their machine-gun turrets could rotate only 80 degrees. At first, the British had such confidence in their “precision bombing” that they made elaborate efforts to avoid civilian targets; but in 1942, with the ineffectiveness of their raids beginning to show, they switched to a policy of area bombing. The justification rested on three pillars: retribution for the German bombing of British cities, the crippling of the German production capacity, and the destruction of German morale. As Hastings notes, the moral implications of the choice were never discussed; and to the above list he adds a critical fourth element – by going over whole-hog to this policy, the British could prolong the opening of the “Second Front” and keep their losses to the 50,000 airmen killed. Hastings argues that strategic bombing did not significantly shorten the war, since it was ineffective until the tide had already turned. But the center of the book is the airmen themselves, who were offered up for slaughter – the chances of any of them lasting a month were slim – and who were transformed during the war from high-living adventurers to highly-trained technocrats. He manages, tersely, to convey something of the horror they experienced over Germany. A successful book in every way; thoughtfully analytic and emotionally gripping at the same time

Book of the Week – The Joker

About the Book
To survive over 20 years of active service in the SAS takes a particular kind of man. Pete Scholey, ex Royal Artillery and Parachute Regiment, possessed the necessary mix of courage and coolness under extreme pressure. He joined the SAS in 1963 and eventually hung up his boots in 1986, 23 years later. During that time he served – often covertly – in many of the world’s trouble spots. In “The Joker”, he vividly describes life as a soldier at the sharp end, giving first-hand accounts of the many actions he was involved in, from jungle warfare in Borneo and desert fighting in Aden and Oman to his part in the setting up of the counter-terrorist team that was successfully used in the siege of the Iranian Embassy in 1980. He outlines the operational skills that took his teams deep into enemy territory without ever being captured, reveals how they achieved their objectives and describes the humour that he managed to find in the most hair-raising moments. An exciting account of some of this century’s most sensitive and dangerous operations, told by a born raconteur, “The Joker” also offers a genuine insight into the toughness, professionalism and camaraderie that has made the SAS the world’s premier fighting force.

Book of the Week – Vulcan 607

About the Book
It was to be one of the most ambitious operations since 617 Squadron bounced their revolutionary bombs into the dams of the Ruhr Valley in 1943…When Argentine forces invaded the Falklands in the early hours of 2 April 1982, Britain’s military chiefs were faced with a real-life Mission Impossible. Its opening shot, they decided, would be Operation Black Buck: to strike a body blow at the occupying army, and make them realize that nothing was safe – not even Buenos Aires…The idea was simple: to destroy the vital landing strip at Port Stanley. The reality was more complicated. The only aircraft that could possibly do the job was three months from being scrapped, and the distance it had to travel was four thousand miles beyond its maximum range. It would take fifteen Victor tankers and seventeen separate in-flight refuellings to get one Avro Vulcan B2 over the target, and give its crew any chance of coming back alive. Yet less than a month later, a formation of elderly British jets was launched from a remote island aribase to carry out the longest-range air attack in history. At the tip of the spear was a single aircraft, six men, and twenty-one thousand-pound bombs, facing a hornet’s nest of modern weaponry: the radar-guided guns and missiles of the Argentine defences. There would be no second chances…It was the end of an era – the last time the RAF flew heavy bombers into combat before they were replaced by their digital, fly-by-wire, laser-guided successors. There were many who believed it couldn’t be done. Drawing on extensive interviews with the combatants, Falklands residents and British High Command, and with unprecedented access to comtemporary military records, Rowland White takes us, for the first time, to the beating heart of the legendary raid. “Vulcan 607″ is a story of ingenuity, courage and sheer bloody-mindedness that’s destined to become a classic.

Book of the Week – Home Run

About the Book
Throughout the Second World War, thousands found themselves cut off behind the lines in Nazi occupied Europe – soldiers were left stranded on beaches after the chaotic evacuation of Dunkirk, airmen flying operations against the Germans were blasted out of the sky by flak and fighters. They were alone and on the run in enemy territory with just one goal – to get back to Britain and to safety. Some made solitary treks through hundreds of miles of enemy territory, others attempted precarious sea crossings in stolen boats. Many placed their lives in the hands of brave civilians who risked the wrath of a brutal regime if they dared to offer assistance. Life for the evaders hung in the balance and if they were to survive they had to rely on guile and sheer luck. John Nichol and Tony Rennell tell the dramatic story of the heroes who made it home … and those who did not.