They say one's heart leaps into one's mouth, and that is exactly what I felt. In the glass I saw a huge fireball erupt near the stern of the target. TThey say one's heart leaps into one's mouth, and that is exactly what I felt. In the glass I saw a huge fireball erupt near the stern of the target. Then we heard the noise of the first hit, carried to us through the water. Then Archer-Fish felt the stock waves created by the 680 pounds of torpex explosive. - Commander Joseph F. Enright, who commanded USS Archerfish, which sank the Japanese aircraft carrier Shinano, the largest warship ever sunk by a submarine.
Shinano, the battleship-turned-carrier, was the largest aircraft carrier in service during the World War II and, was the supreme hope of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) and the Japanese Empire in regaining the Japanese naval supremacy in Pacific. Against all odds and fast dwindling naval resources, the Japanese Navy believed that this super-carrier will tilt the balance of equation in their favor in the Pacific, but this hope lasted only for a few hours. Shinano!: The Sinking of Japan's Secret Supership, is the first hand account of the tragic fate of the hastily commissioned Japanese aircraft carrier told by Captain Joseph F. Enright, who was in charge of the US Navy Submarine Archer-Fish, which sank ‘Shinano�, on her maiden voyage.
Captain Enright brings the battle between the Japanese giant and the 2000 ton Archer-Fish alive in front of the reader with multiple perspectives of the naval action and taut narrative. He reports the adrenaline rush and the frantic activities onboard both Shinano and Archer-Fish by switching the viewpoints of the narrative effectively and presents both the Japanese and American side of the battle for the reader to inspect. For this, Enright relies extensively on wartime reports and eyewitness accounts from both sides.
The Yamato Class Battleships
By early 1941, the Japanese Navy had about 10 fleet carriers in the Pacific � compared to only 3 from US Navy � and they were thought totally invulnerable. Shinano was initially designed as a gigantic battleship of the Yamato Class. The decision to build the Yamato Class battleships were made by the Japanese as a part of increasing their naval supremacy in the Pacific. During that time the Japanese - even Germans � were under the influence of the philosophy of building gigantic weapons, so it was natural that the vessels of the Yamato class composed of some of the biggest battleships ever built.
[image] The twin Yamato class battleships, Yamato and Musashi anchored in the waters off of the Japanese held Truk Islands. Photo taken in early 1943.
The first two vessels of the class were Yamato and Musashi, both 70,000 ton behemoths with nine massive 460-mm naval guns and were commissioned in December 1941 and August 1942 respectively. Two more battleships of the same class were in the design board during that time.
But the Battle of Midway in June 1942 changed things dramatically for Japan. They lost their main naval strike-force � including fleet carriers like Akagi, Kaga, Soryu and Hiryu, which sank and carriers like Shokaku, which suffered major damages - in this battle.
This setback forced the Japanese Navy to redesign and alter the third ship in the Yamato class, Shinano, whose hull was already built as a battleship, into an aircraft carrier. There was a fourth vessel in the Yamato class � unnamed and only known by the code number 111 -, which was never finished. It was only 30 percentage complete when the project was stopped in December 1941.
Things were going bad for the Imperial Japanese Navy. Musashi sank at the The Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944 and they lost Yamato [Glorious Way to Die: The Kamikaze Mission of the Battleship Yamato by Russell Spurr provides a solid account of the final mission of Yamato. (review)] at Okinawa in April 1945, both falling prey to massed US airstrikes, conducted by hundreds of carrier-based aircrafts.
The ‘Mystery Ship�, IJN Shinano
The plan to convert Shinano into a super carrier was shrouded in complete secrecy and at that time the allied powers were totally in the dark about the existence of the third ship in the Yamato class. Shinano, which had a length of 872 feet had a full displacement of 71,890 tons, was designed and built to withstand both airstrikes and torpedo attacks.
Instead of going for a full-fledged fleet carrier, the decision makers in Imperial Japanese Navy decided to build Shinano as a support carrier, a very rare class of vessel in the naval history. The plan was to make Shinano a floating resupply platform for other fleet carriers and after much deliberation she was also provided with features which enabled her to act as a small fleet carrier for defensive purposes.
She was designed with an enormous flight deck and a massive hanger for storing her own dive bombers and torpedo planes along with replacement aircraft intended for other fleet carriers.
The massive setbacks suffered by the Japanese Navy in the The Battle of Leyte Gulf put immense pressure on the immediate launch of Shinano. Due to this, Shinano, which was far from complete was launched on 8 October, 1944.
[image] Captain Toshio Abe
She was led by Captain Toshio Abe, and Shinano underwent some hurried sea trials in the Tokyo Bay during the next few weeks.
[image] The recon photo of the Imperial Japanese Naval Base at Yokosuka Arsenal taken by a long-range photo-recon F-13 (B-29) Superfortess on 1 November 1944. The partially completed aircraft carrier Shinano can be seen in the top right (marked with red lines), undergoing sea trials in Tokyo Bay.
While undergoing sea trials outside the entrance to Yokosuka Harbour, she was photographed from an altitude of 9,800 m by a B-29 recon aircraft. This fly-over by a recon aircraft panicked the Japanese Navy, and hastened decisions were made to move Shinano from Yokosuka to a safe place. Shinano was officially commissioned on November 19, 1944, and she was ordered to move to the comparative safety of Kure Naval Base, on the Seto Inland Sea, were she was to be provided with her bombers and fighters.
[image] A photograph of Shinano undergoing sea trials in Tokyo Bay, taken by a civilian photographer on 11 November 1944. Apart from the aerial view of the carrier from the recon photo, this is the only known photograph of Shinano.
Shinano departed from Yokosuka on 28 November, 1944 for Kure, a journey of 500 miles, with 2,515 crewmen and was accompanied by Japanese destroyers Hamakaze, Yukikaze and Isokaze. In her maiden voyage she had a load of 50 MXY7 Ohka rocket-propelled Kamikaze flying bombs and six Shinyo suicide boats onboard.
[image] Photo of the U.S. Navy Balao-class submarine USS Archerfish (SS-311) near San Francisco on 5 June 1945.
At the same time, a lone US submarine, Archer-Fish, was operating in the enemy waters of Tokyo Bay, providing lifeguard service for the B-24 bomber raids that were conducted on Tokyo. USS Archer-Fish (SS-311) was a Balao class submarine commissioned on 4 September 1943. After a year of active duty at the East China Sea and Midway, she was undergoing her fifth patrol and was under the command of Commander Joseph F. Enright in November 1944.
[image] Capt. Joseph F. Enright
Archer-Fish picked up Shinano on November 28 1944 � just 2 hours into the maiden voyage of Shinano � while patrolling south of Nagoya. When Archer-Fish made contact with the super carrier on radar, she was a total Mystery Ship, as the US Navy knew nothing about Shinano and the carrier was not in the US Navy’s Recognition Manual. After tracking the prey for over six hours, Archer-Fish fired six torpedoes at Shinano. Four of these torpedoes found the target and struck Shinano, causing massive flooding and within hours total sinking of the super carrier.
OUT OF 2,515 PERSONNEL ABOARD SHINANO, MISSING 1,435; SURVIVORS 1,080; SURVIVING OFFICERS 55; COMMON SEAMEN AND NONCOMMISSIONED OFFICERS 993; CIVILIANS, 32. THE EMPEROR’S PORTRAIT IS SECURE ABOARD HAMAKAZE. ALL SECRET DOCUMENTS SANK WITH THE SHIP IN A LOCKED SAFE IN 4,000 METERS OF WATER
Japanese Naval Headquarters was informed by radio message about the fate of Shinano, which sank just 17 hours into her maiden voyage. With a tonnage of 72,000, Shinano became the biggest warship in history to be sunk by a submarine.
At the time of sinking, Enright and his crew didn’t knew about Shinano and they knew only that they killed a big Japanese ship. It was only after the war that the identity of Shinano surfaced and Archer-Fish received a Presidential Unit Citation and Captain Enright received Navy Cross post-war for the action against Shinano.
By referring to eyewitness accounts and naval reports filed by survivors of the Shinano with Imperial Japanese Navy, Capt. Joseph F. Enright, reconstructs the events of the entire battle between Shinano and Archer-Fish for the readers using details, clarity and engaging reconstructed dialogs.
Why Shinano became the Aircraft Carrier with the shortest Imperial Navy Career?
Shinano was commissioned in a situation when the Japanese Navy was in really dire straits. The revised plans for Shinano along with pressure to complete before the estimated time-frame has resulted in design and build compromises that ultimately led to the quick sinking of the ship. Shinano was not complete when she was commissioned and substantial amount of work was pending on her when the Navy was forced to make her operational. She was not ready for the sea, she was not properly tested and she was manned by untrained and inexperienced crew, which all made her irrelevant as a weapon.
Many of the defensive measures on Shinano existed only in paper, and the unfinished pumping systems, issues in waterproofing, untested watertight compartments, unfinished firefighting equipment’s and lack of know-how on using them by the crew all contributed to the ultimate tragedy of Shinano....more
�Bonds of Wire� by Kingsley Brown, a Royal Canadian Air Force pilot, is a narrative of his experiences as a Prisoner-of-War at the famous Luftwaffe-ru�Bonds of Wire� by Kingsley Brown, a Royal Canadian Air Force pilot, is a narrative of his experiences as a Prisoner-of-War at the famous Luftwaffe-run prison camp Stalag Luft III during World War II. But unlike the other POW stories from the time period, ‘Bonds of Wire� is quiet different, as throughout the narrative the author is trying to identify and highlight moments of kindness and humanity that he encountered from his enemies during his three year incarceration at the POW camp. For Kingsley Brown these wonderful moments of �humor and compassion� were important, as they were quiet instrumental in his survival during terrible times at the camp.
His journey to the Stalag Luft III
When he was shot down on July 3 1942 over Holland by a German Messerschmitt night-fighter, RCAF Bomber pilot Kingsley Brown was expecting that his constant thoughts of danger, fear, suffering and even death that accompanied him during his days of active combat duty were finally going to catch up with him as a prisoner at the hand of his enemies. After his capture Kingsley Brown was initially taken to a German barracks in the Dutch town of Staveren and from there he was transported to the �Leeuwarden�, one of the major Luftwaffe fighter bases in Holland during that time.
After some more shifting about, he along with other captured air force men were transported to the Stalag Luft III POW camp. From the moment of his capture to his arrival at the Luftwaffe camp at �Zagan�, Kingsley Brown encounters officers and soldiers of the German army who are friendly to a point, and with �humor� and understanding he was quiet able to melt the ice between him and his capturers. The way they treat him with dignity and even kindness in response to his gentle behavior acts as a moral booster for him and gives him that single spark of ‘inspiration� that acts as a beacon for any human being to traverse an ocean of desperation and awfulness without going insane.
Kingsley Brown meeting with a German officer who lost his son to Allied bombing; the guards while escorting him to Amsterdam providing him with a seat in first-class; him having an amusing conversation about �Pied Piper� with his guards while traveling through Hameln are some of the interesting moments from his narrative until his imprisonment at the Stalag Luft III.
His days at the Stalag Luft III
In the initial days of his life at the Stalag Luft III camp, he becomes a member of the group of officers who are assigned with the duty of forging documents and permits for those who are aspiring to escape from the prison camp. After a few months of propaganda and document forging efforts, Brown and a fellow air force officer named �Gordon Brettell� manage to escape by hiding among some new constructions happening in the camp. But after three days of desperate traveling they get re-captured at Chemintz and are send back to the Stalag Luft III. Gordon Brettell was later murdered by the Gestapo at Danzing after participating in the epic �Great Escape� of 1944 from Stalag Luft III.
Another attempt by Brown along with Joe Ricks, an RAF flight lieutenant, to escape the camp by switching identities with two prisoners from Stalag VIII-B in Lamsdorf also results in a failure. While reading the narrations of his days at the Stalag Luft III, the reader can glimpse some of the finest examples of human mind seeking and finding sanity & normalcy from simple acts of kindness during a time of utter chaos and anxiety. During his transportation back to Zagan on train after his re-capture at Lamsdorf, he encounters a group of German officers and school teachers returning to Berlin for Christmas. Brown’s descriptions of how these fellow travelers, his guards and himself created some moments of happiness by singing songs and carols and sharing anecdotes about Canada is a perfect example for the capability of human beings to find happiness even during the apex of desperation.
Soldiers adorning different sets of uniforms and fighting for different ideologies becoming mere human beings can be glimpsed in another incident shared by Brown. After their capture at Lamsdorf, Brown and Joe are put in solitary confinement. On the Christmas day of 1943, a group of German prison guards secretly take both Brown and Joe to an orderly room and allow them to listen to the Christmas greeting from King George VI over radio as a Christmas present.
The historic importance of Browns narrative
Brown’s narrative gains importance from a historic perspective due to the fact that as a resident at the Stalag Luft III during early 1945 Brown was perfectly in a position to narrate the end of the Nazi era happening around him in great detail. When the pressure from an advancing Russian army becomes too much, the POWs at the camp are evacuated by the guards and are forced to march with masses of retreating German units in a great migration � the death march - across Germany, fighting the threats of both the harshest of the winter and a capture by the Russian army.
The descriptions of prisoners as well as the retreating German units sharing farmyards at night, the civilians sharing whatever meager food supplies they have with the prisoners, some of the fellow prisoners perishing to the mental and physical strain of the march across harshest of conditions are all presented in detail by Brown. After days of marching on open roads, the prisoners were taken to the infamous Stalag III-A prison camp in Luckenwalde. Finally on April 20th 1945, the Russian offensive becomes too hot for the remaining German forces and the guards at the Stalag III-A lock the prisoners inside the camp and abandon their posts. On April 22nd Russian tanks burst through the barbed wire fences surrounding the camp at Luckenwalde to liberate the prisoners of war and along with them Brown.
Of all the POW narratives and POW escape documents I have read from the World War II, �Bonds of War� was a book that was quiet surprising with the amount of positiveness and cheerfulness that Kingsley Brown discover during such a terrible time as a prisoner. By preparing his mind to welcome the unexpected, Kingsley Brown overcomes hostilities of wartime through humor, warmth, kindness and acts of friendship shown towards his enemies, which surprisingly gets reciprocated in many unlikely occasions. It was quiet inspiring to see Kingsley Brown even when engulfed in the gloom, sorrow and fear of the imprisonment and death happening around him carefully picking and cherishing each moments of cheerfulness � even if they are minute - as elixirs for survival.
A fascinating narrative both as a historic document and as an inspiring story, which can be enjoyed by both World War II history enthusiasts and generic fans of exciting real life stories....more
Lieutenant Ramsey's War: From Horse Soldier to Guerrilla Commander by Edwin Price Ramsey is a remarkable military memoir, which inspires the reader wLieutenant Ramsey's War: From Horse Soldier to Guerrilla Commander by Edwin Price Ramsey is a remarkable military memoir, which inspires the reader with the author’s personal tussle with the hardships of war and overcoming them with courage, sense of duty and the extremes of human endurance. This is a book, which while describing the personal story of Ed Ramsey will introduce the reader to the South West Pacific theatre of World War II and the engagements between Allied forces and Japan.
When the Japanese forces invaded The Commonwealth of the Philippines on 8th December 1941, Philippines was under the control of United States of America. Ed Ramsey was a U.S. Army cavalry officer in the 26th Cavalry Regiment, Philippine Scouts at that time. When the Japanese Invasion came, the 24 years old Ed Ramsey � with only a few months of active duty until then - found his dreams of seeking an exotic foreign post, rich with tropical plants, polo ponies, fawning servants and dusky women turning upside down with the merciless realities of war.
His first act of courage came on January 16, 1942 while covering the withdrawal of U.S. and Filipino forces into the Bataan Peninsula on Luzon. At the village of Morong, Ramsey led 27 members of his mounted unit against hundreds of Japanese troops in a mission aimed at delaying the advancing enemy forces. Inspiring and fueling his vastly outnumbered men with bravery alone he and his troop audaciously charged at the enemy, with their heads low over their horses' necks and madly firing their pistols, and successfully drove back the advancing Japanese infantry while defending the village for five arduous hours in mayhem of blood and fire. This brave engagement at Morong will be remembered forever, as it was the last horse-mounted cavalry charge in the US military history.
But his epic life story contributing to the history of Philippines and the course of war at the pacific theater of World War II was only beginning. When the combined American-Filipino army acknowledged their defeat in April 1942, Ed Ramsey did not surrender; he eluded capture by the Japanese and joined with Col. Claude Thorp who was organizing a guerrilla resistance force out of what left of American & Filipino army. �Lieutenant Ramsey's War� from this point onwards describes in detail how a clever and resourceful junior officer grew within the ranks of this guerrilla army and led them for three years in activities of subterfuge and sabotage against the Japanese - all the while braving his own personal war against malaria, anemia, and acute malnutrition and infection - until the return of regular American forces in 1945. The book captures the gripping and often poignant moments from these guerrilla warfare days � days rife with bravery, survival, action, misery, fear and mortal danger - with splendid simplicity.
‘Lieutenant Ramsey's War� is an incredible book that blends both historical and personal moments. This is not just a war memoir, it also gives the reader insights into some key moments from Ramsey’s personal life � like the death of his father and its effect on the family; his close relationship with his mother and sister; their struggles to keep up with life; the story of his brave sister pursuing her dream of becoming a pilot; circumstances which led to his career as a cavalry officer� which allows him to understand Ed Ramsey both as a person and as a military hero. I conclude this review with an excerpt from an Interview, which he gave in 2001.
“I look back and think of myself as a soldier, not as a hero, I just had a temperament that made it impossible for me to surrender.�
“When one considers that right up to the end of the war, in 1945, there was virtually no increase in our heavy-water stocks in Germany, and that for t“When one considers that right up to the end of the war, in 1945, there was virtually no increase in our heavy-water stocks in Germany, and that for the last experiments early in 1945 there were in fact only two and a half tons of heavy water available, it will be seen that it was the elimination of German heavy-water production in Norway that was the main factor in our failure to achieve a self-sustaining atomic reactor before the war ended.� - Dr. Kurt Diebner, administrative director of the German nuclear program.
�Assault in Norway� is the dramatic true account of �Operation Gunnerside�, one of the most vital and top-secret missions of Second World War. Based on interviews with the actual commandos who participated in the mission, Thomas Gallagher recreates the history, planning and execution of this operation in vivid detail. ‘Assault in Norway� gives the reader an inside look at how a band of courageous and tough Norwegian special operatives from the SOE (Special Operations Executive) braved the odds of perils set against them by the nature and allied soldiers to land a severe blow on the Nuclear Weapons program of Nazi Germany. This is military history, which can be read like a gripping thriller.
The book starts by tracing the roots of the mission to the discovery of nuclear fission by German pioneer scientist, Otto Hahn during 1938. This discovery led to the discussions and researches about super-explosives among physicists and governments all over the world and when the world was thrown into the turmoil of the Second World War, this quest for military superiority through the super weapon was in high gears. When the Germans occupied Norway in 1940, �Norsk Hydro� hydroelectric plant in Vemork, Norway was the only hydroelectric plant in the world capable of producing �heavy water� or �Deuterium Oxide�, which is an exceptionally efficient moderator for slowing down neutrons in a Uranium pile � which is critical for establishing a sustainable chain reaction. Just after the occupation of Norway the production of heavy water was increased and in 1942 when the Germans ordered the production to be doubled and placed an embargo on the export of Uranium ore from the then Czechoslovakia, warning bells began to ring in the war rooms of the Allied forces. According to the British and American physicists Germany was now seriously into the race for a Nuclear Weapon and the Vemork facility was a prime concern and a threat.
The ‘Norsk Hydro� plant was located on the perch of a cliff on a mountain wilderness and this location made it not suitable for nighttime bombing raids. This was the perfect setting for ‘Operation Gunnerside�, a tactical strike aimed at sabotaging the operations of the Vemork plant and the rest of the book describes the preparations for the mission, particulars of a catastrophic pilot mission which was a total failure, the successful execution of the subsequent commando raid, and the follow up operations by brave Norwegian SOE operatives which resulted in the stalling of the German Nuclear Program.
The complete success of the assault can be read from the following flash message from SS General Wilhelm Rediess who was the commanding General of all SS troops stationed in occupied Norway to SS leaders in Berlin.
"On the night of 27th-28th February 1943, about 1:15 a.m., an installation of importance to the war economy was destroyed at the Vemork factory near Rjukan by the detonation of explosive charges. The attack was carried out by three armed men wearing grey-green uniforms. They gained entrance to the factory by cutting a chain in the gate, and passed by German sentries and Norwegian watchmen undetected. From the effects they left behind, it can be assumed that they came from Britain."
‘Assault in Norway� is the true story of the brave people behind one of the most daring commando raids of World War II. Both casual readers who enjoy a tale of adventure and action and those who have interest in military history will find ‘Assault in Norway� a delightful read....more
"I can't even make sense out of my relationship with my father--how am I supposed to make sense out of the Holocaust?" - Art Spiegelman
�Maus, II: And "I can't even make sense out of my relationship with my father--how am I supposed to make sense out of the Holocaust?" - Art Spiegelman
�Maus, II: And Here My Troubles Began� continues with the painful story of �Vladek Spiegelman� from where �Maus I� left off but in a more intense manner. ‘Maus, II: And Here My Troubles Began� is the completion of a masterpiece by Art Spiegelman. The book delves further deep into the everlasting struggle that his family had to go through even after his parents surviving the Nazi death camps and the lingering effects of the holocaust on his family, which makes the private pains of the author more raw and shocking to the reader.
‘Maus, II� chronicles the life of ‘Vladek Spiegelman� and his wife starting from the days of their imprisonment in Auschwitz. The way in which the author is concentrating his narratives on to the sheer tenacity shown by ‘Vladek� for surviving each horror that he and his wife face inside the walls of Auschwitz is brilliant. Instead of going much into the greater portrayals of the slaughters and atrocities of the death camp this approach of highlighting the individual perseverance of ‘Vladek Spiegelman� as a survivalist makes ‘Maus II� a great attempt by the author in his quest for understanding his father and his past. This approach makes it more personal and more enjoyable to the reader. This also shows how the character of ‘Vladek� was influenced in his life following the ‘survival� after witnessing so much death of loved ones and experiencing humiliation, physical and mental strain, starvation and trauma.
‘Maus II� also goes to greater depths in portraying Art’s troubled relationship with his father and his difficulty in understanding what his parents really went through before his birth. Some of the imagery in the cartoon panels � like those where the mice portrayed with open mouths as if they are silently screaming - can literally haunt the reader for days.
If this story was told in a conventional narrative format it still would have been painful; but it wouldn’t have conveyed the plain naked monstrosity of what ‘Vladek Spiegelman� had to go through during the war and for the rest of his life to the reader in the way it does with these powerful cartoon panels.
Note: I cannot as a casual reviewer do full justice to what this book will be for a reader just through my words. It is something that is to be experienced by yourself; only one thing is certain, if you get connected to this book as a reader it will take some time to recover from its influence....more
�It would take many books, my life, and no one wants anyway to hear such stories.� - Vladek Spiegelman.
�Maus, I� and �Maus, II� are two books that sha�It would take many books, my life, and no one wants anyway to hear such stories.� - Vladek Spiegelman.
�Maus, I� and �Maus, II� are two books that shatter one of the myths about the Holocaust; the myth that the monstrosity of Holocaust is beyond the realms of artistic imagination. Art Spiegelman refutes this through a brilliant and brutal depiction of the horrors of Holocaust in a comic book that will honestly shock the reader.
�Maus� is the painful story of �Vladek Spiegelman�, a survivor of the Hiteler’s Europe and the Nazi death camps, and traces each episode of his entire life - starting from his youth, then his marriage, life during the early days of the Third Reich, his struggles during the initial days of persecution, frantic attempts for personal survival and the survival of his loved one’s in occupied Poland, getting captured and getting imprisoned in Auschwitz, surviving the death camps and his later struggling attempts in leading a normal life until death. It is an honest narration of how the calm-serene world of an individual and people connected to him is turned upside down in to a quest for survival filled with death, destruction, loyalty and betrayal. The first volume of this narration describes Vladek’s story up to his imprisonment in Auschwitz.
For me as a reader everything that the artist described in this book were already familiar, but the way in which Art Spiegelman mixes his present day relations with his father and their arguments and then taking the reader back to the horrors that his father and family went through during the war felt so unique. It was the author’s clever use of cartoon as an influential medium to highlight the impacts of the brutality and horrors of war on ‘Vladek Spiegelman� as an individual and on his life � both during the war and after surviving the war �, which felt brilliant for me.
While reading ‘Maus� the reader also learns about Art Spiegelman’s painful relationship with his parents, especially his father and his attempts at understanding what his parents went through during the days of horror. Glimpses of the author’s private life during the creation of this book and the impact of his mother’s suicide on the author are also brilliantly entwined with the story of ‘Vladek Spiegelman� in ‘Maus�. The struggles that Art Spiegelman went through in his personal life is cleverly captured in a cartoon book with in the cartoon book titled �Prisoner on the hell planet a case history� which illustrates his mental situation during the days of the death of his mother.
The idea of metaphorically representing characters of different races as animal caricatures � Jews as mice, Germans as cats, The French as frogs, The Americans as dogs, The Poles as pigs, the Gypsies as moths � is simply genius. Why this form of characterization was used can be seen from the words of the author himself.
Ultimately, what the book is about is the commonality of human beings. It's crazy to divide things down the nationalistic or racial or religious lines. And that's the whole point, isn't it? These metaphors, which are meant to self-destruct in my book - and I think they do self-destruct - still have a residual force that allows them to work as metaphors, and still get people worked up over them.
Excerpt taken from :'The Jewish Graphic Novel: Critical Approaches' Edited by Laurence Roth and Samantha Baskind
For me ‘Maus� is a book that takes graphic novels to a level of power that was not thought possible previously. This is art at it’s best....more
Battleship �Yamato� was the heaviest and most powerfully armed battleship ever constructed and it was a proud gem of the Imperial Japanese Navy duringBattleship �Yamato� was the heaviest and most powerfully armed battleship ever constructed and it was a proud gem of the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II. Commissioned in 1941, Yamato was Initially utilized as the flagship of the Japanese Combined Fleet and participated in the �Battle of Midway� and �Battle of Leyte Gulf�. In 1945 when the Japanese naval force was seriously on the back foot in the Pacific, in a desperate attempt to regain some leverage and to slow down the Allied advance they gave shape to a suicide mission codenamed �Operation Ten-Go�, which assigned virtually every available Japanese surface forces in to the protection of the Island of Okinawa against Allied invasion.
The battle scared leviathan ‘Yamato� � she was actually hit by multiple armor piercing bombs from aircrafts of USS Essex, during the ‘Battle of Sibuyan Sea� and despite suffering moderate damage it stood battle worthy � along with other destroyers and Kamikaze units were thrown into a suicide mission from which there was no safe return. On 7 April 1945 after hours of battle with the Allied battle ships and aircraft’s she finally succumbed to mortal wounds suffered from a dozen direct torpedo and at least half a dozen bomb hits. With his fascinating military history volume �A Glorious Way to Die: The Kamikaze Mission of the Battleship Yamato, April 1945�, British journalist �Russell Spurr� tells the reader the tale of ‘Yamato� and recreates the glory and tragedy of her last engagement.
[image] Battle Ship Yamato
Written with an eye to detail this spellbinding narrative from Russell Spurr is the result of meticulous research and eyewitness accounts from both American and Japanese participants of the Second World War. The book is written with enough flair to keep the reader always hooked and the last voyage of the Yamato on its suicide mission to Okinawa comes alive before the reader's eyes with graphic details. The author has succeeded in giving a certain amount of life to the characters so that the reader will feel as if the narrations are made through their voices. The maps, vessel schematics, diagrams and rare photographs, which accompany the text, add to the value of the narration.
‘A Glorious Way to Die� scrutinizes the events and decisions that led to ‘Yamato� getting assigned with a suicide mission, and retells it’s final battle - with a loss of more than 3000 of it’s crew members - from the perspective of both American and Japanese participants. In this book Russell Spurr never tries to glorify the events from either side; he gives a commentary that is candid and brutally honest all the while taking the role of a non-biased observer, which makes his narrations credible from a historic perspective.
[image] Japanese battleship Yamato blows up, following massive attacks by U.S. Navy carrier planes north of Okinawa
The segment of the book, which describes the American planes peppering the sea with machine-gun fire against survivors of a sunken ‘Yamato� can be taken as an example for this brutal candidness of Russell Spurr’s narrative.
“The Americans felt no compunction about slaughtering their helpless foes. They had always fought a blatantly racial war in the Pacific � and so had the Japanese. Headline-seeking brass hats openly declared that killing Japs was no worse than killing lice. The apogee of brutalization was to be reached, four months later, at Hiroshima�
This encapsulates how armed confrontations, which begin on political levels, often collapse into chaos of �racial conflict�; history is rife with such cases of battles escalating into mass killings and we will be seeing many more such cases in the future.
What makes this book more valuable for a military historian is that it inspects the politics and mentality behind the Japanese tactics of 'suicide war' meticulously. The psychology of choosing death instead of defeat � one of the primary traditions of the Samurai life and the Bushido code � ingrained in the Japanese military culture can be perceived from the way in which ‘Yamato� was made the largest Kamikaze against the opponents. Anyone interested in gaining insights into the Kamikaze attacks and its state of mind will definitely find the book much useful.
Praiseworthy research invested by the author for gaining historical evidences and his perfect story telling abilities in chronicling the findings of the research makes this book pretty captivating....more
“All of Amsterdam, all of Holland, in fact the entire western coast of Europe all the way down to Spain, are talking about the invasion day and nig“All of Amsterdam, all of Holland, in fact the entire western coast of Europe all the way down to Spain, are talking about the invasion day and night, debating, making bets and � hoping.
The suspense is rising to fever pitch.�
- Anne Frank, 22 May 1944
In June 2004, on the 60th anniversary commemoration of the D-Day Normandy Landings, BBC One commissioned a 120-minute factual drama documentary titled �D-Day 6.6.1944�, which was directed by �Richard Dale�. This dramatized documentary film was directed entirely based on the experiences compiled from interviews with the actual participants who went to the shores of France on the eventful day of 6 June 1944, a key moment that turned the direction of World War II; a moment for which the millions of people who were suffering under the shroud of Nazi occupation were waiting for about 5 years.
The documentary focused on bringing the true stories of the men and women who participated in the largest sea and airborne invasion in history by retelling their perspectives using original footage and entirely new visuals shot on the shores of Normandy. The documentary and an Imperial War Museum Exhibition on this historic event was accompanied by a companion volume from BBC Books, with the same title, which brings alive the memories and the people behind the most audacious amphibious assault that mankind has ever witnessed.
“The psychological impact on many of the troops who took part led them to bury their memories in the decades that followed. As these men and women enter the final years of their lives, many of them now find themselves reflecting on those experiences and talking about them in depth for the first time. As the number of survivors dwindles and more and more veterans� associations close, the sixtieth anniversary offers them a final chance to share those memories and experiences with younger generation�
Richard Dale, the director of the film makes this statement about how the actual memories of the participants guided the direction of the documentary. These interviews that were conducted with the veterans and survivors of the event � both from the Allied and the German camp - and their witness accounts are the plus points of the book (and of the documentary) as they greatly add to the value of the narrative. You can find viewpoints from the whole spectrum of participants � like the fresh soldiers who were then barely 18, battle hardened veterans, the generals, the spies, the French resistance volunteers, war reporters and photographers - who partook in the planning and execution of this military operation within this narrative.
In the initial part of the �D-Day 6.6.1944� the reader gets familiarized with the events and decisions that made �Operation Overlord� possible. Through draft plans and minutes of meetings and excerpts from operational dossiers the reader is given an opportunity to inspect the initial efforts that went in to the planning for invasion. The defense measures taken along the Normandy coast to prevent such an invasion is also inspected in detail. We also meet the French Resistance volunteers who braved the ruthless Gestapo for gathering intelligence including details about the shoreline which were vital for formulating the invasion plans, the various invasion troops and their rigorous and often disastrous training efforts, spies and operatives behind the enemy lines planting the seeds of disinformation aimed at keeping the Nazi’s confused about the Allied invasion plans, advance force of commandos crossing the borders with their own vital contributions to the final colossal mission all explained in great detail.
�Operation Tarbrush� from 1944, that played a huge impact on the success of D-Day, conducted by �3 Troop� - one of the least known elite commando units of World War II � which was intended to obtain photographs and other evidence of mines and other traps along the targeted shorelines is one among the many such tiny details that the reader will get acquainted with from the initial part of this book.
The later part of the book is presented like a Countdown to the H-Hour, which presents the reader with hourly updates of the events unfolding on the final day of the invasion, right from the very first movements of the airborne divisions to the final hours of the epic battle. Each of the events from the eventful day is presented with a decent amount of detail along with photographs from the battlefront. The details of ‘Operation Gambit� which was vital for the invasion forces reaching their predestined beaches with pinpoint accuracy; The battle for the beaches with its descriptions of the carnage at Omaha beach; the first responses from the defending German forces; British infantry breaking defenses at Sword beach and pushing into the countryside of Normandy; the push to Caen are all described with details in this hourly narration.
The book is extravagantly illustrated with rare high quality photographs, maps, copies of actual documents related to the invasion, while providing an hour-by-hour commentary on ‘Operation Overlord' and the events leading up to the epic day. Some of the details from the invasion felt not much elaborated like the role of paratroopers and missing of coverage of action from all the beachheads, yet this is a good primer book to have about the D-Day with its great photographic material.
A spellbinding account of World War II told in bold, dense prose. The author tells the combat experiences of ordinary soldiers who fought in the EuropA spellbinding account of World War II told in bold, dense prose. The author tells the combat experiences of ordinary soldiers who fought in the European Theater with gripping effect.
This historical narrative of the allied liberation of Western Europe from D-Day to VE-Day is an incredibly readable book. ...more
“Suddenly there was a flash like the lighting of a huge magnesium flare. As I prostrated myself there came a terrific explosion. I was lifted two feet“Suddenly there was a flash like the lighting of a huge magnesium flare. As I prostrated myself there came a terrific explosion. I was lifted two feet from the ground and I felt a strong wind pass my body� � I was enveloped in an endless cloud of dust so thick it was black. As the dust blew away and my surroundings became visible I saw what seemed to be thousands of tiny, flickering lamps all over the street and in the fields. They were little circles of flame, each about the size of a doughnut... � I looked towards the city and saw a huge, mushroom-shaped cloud rising high into the sky. It was an immense evil-looking pillar…�
Eyewitness account of Tsutomu Yamaguchi *, who was working in the Hiroshima yard of the Mitsubishi shipbuilding company, and who was on his way to work when the atomic bomb dropped more than 1 mile away.
It is hundreds of eyewitness accounts like ³Û²¹³¾²¹²µ³Ü³¦³ó¾±â€™s that make the â€�Handbook of World War IIâ€� by Karen Farrington one of the unique books that I have read on World War II, the most colossal and complex armed conflicts in the human history. These individual voices from history let’s the reader experience the moments of trauma, depression, carnage, acts of valor and endurance associated with this Great War â€� a war which redefined the way wars are fought forever - in three-dimensional clarity. Even with some shortcomings in the way the information is organized, these eyewitness accounts along with the numerous rare photographs and newspaper scans make the book a worthy read for anyone interested in military history.
Karen Farrington manages to cover the entire timeline of the Second World War within this book, tracing the sowing of the seeds of war right from the days of political disorder of the 1920s to its shocking apocalyptic end in 1945, and brings each minor engagements and moments of the war to the reader through concise articles well balanced with photographic material.
The book is divided into three main parts with each of them representing battles fought in the land, in the water and in the air respectively.
[image] Panzer IIIs and IVs from the Battle of Kursk, one of the largest tank battle ever fought. []
In �The Soldiers War� such key moments of land engagements of WWII like the Blitzkrieg, Engagements in Africa, Operation Barbarossa, Engagements from The Pacific theatre, battles in Italy, Operation Overlord, fierce tank battles and the final thrust through the Nazi Germany are all covered in detail.
[image] British troops evacuating Dunkirk's beaches to a waiting destroyer during Operation Dynamo []
The section �War at Sea� chronicles key moments of naval warfare like the evacuation of Dunkirk, U-boat engagements in the Atlantic, Battle of Cape Matapan, The hunt for Battleship Bismarck and Battle of Midway.
[image] An Aichi D3A Type 99 kanbaku (dive bomber) launches from the Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft carrier Akagi to participate in the second wave during the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii
The section �Battle for the Skies� describe epic moments of aerial warfare like Battle of Britain, aerial battles in the Balkans, The kamikaze warfare and Pearl Harbor and finally the atomic bombings in Hiroshima & Nagasaki.
[image] The column of debris and dust topped by a cloud of white vapor when the Atom Bomb burst over Nagasaki � scan from my copy of Feb 1946, National Geographic Magazine
Rare photographs from various war museums along with maps, posters, newspaper cuttings and side notes enrich these narratives. The amount of information that is packed into this slim volume is amazing as the book covers a whole spectrum of theatres of conflicts. The sheer number of interviews that the author has conducted with war veterans who survived this inferno and civilians who went through the traumatic days of war adds much depth to the content. A detailed timeline of the war from March 15, 1939 to September 16, 1945 is also provided within the book.
Now to one of the key shortcomings of the �Handbook of World War II�: When a book that packs so much amount of information lacks any sort of index, finding details on a specific moment or topic from its pages becomes a frustrating process. If we leave out this issue, then this rather small volume is worth reading.
-Reviewed October 27, 2015 Actual Rating 3.5/5
* Tsutomu Yamaguchi is the only person to have been officially recognized by the government of Japan as surviving both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings. He was originally from Nagasaki and was in Hiroshima when the bomb was dropped on August 6, 1945. He survived the explosion with multiple wounds and went back to Nagasaki the next day and was at his office on August 9, 1945 when the second atomic bombing happened. ...more
6 June 1944 is a day that can be seen as the pivotal point of World War II, which definitely swung the momentum of war in favor of the Allied forces. 6 June 1944 is a day that can be seen as the pivotal point of World War II, which definitely swung the momentum of war in favor of the Allied forces. It was a day when the allied forces successfully opened the final European phase of the World War II by invading and gaining footholds on the shores of France, which was the first step, aimed at freeing the continent from Nazi occupation. The Longest Day from Cornelius Ryan is a masterpiece of military history and a true classic, which gives the reader a thrilling account on the tragic yet heroic battle, which happened on 6 June 1944, the D-Day. Even though there are hundreds of books that narrates the history, massive battle, events and the aftermath of the Allied Invasion at Normandy, ‘The Longest Day� with it’s captivatingly lucid, novel like narrative and succinctness shines among them.
‘The Longest Day� is all about the story of the people: the men of the Allied forces, the enemy they fought and the civilians who were caught up in the bloody confusion of D-Day. The book was the result of exhaustive researches and interviews that Cornelius Ryan conducted with the survivors of that eventful day. With great skill the author creates an epic overview of the Allied Invasion out of little anecdotes and personal experiences told from the perspective of participants from all camps � Americans, British, Canadians, Germans and French.
Field Marshal Erwin Rommel who was the commander in chief of the Army Group B and who was responsible for the German defenses at Normandy foresaw the importance of the Allied Invasion attempts on the course of war and on German history. His predictions about such an invasion can be seen from his words taken from a conversation with his aide Hauptmann Helmuth Lang on 22 April 1944.
The war will be won or lost on the beaches. We’ll have only one chance to stop the enemy and that’s while he’s in the water ... struggling to get ashore. Reserves will never get up to the point of attack and it’s foolish even to consider them. The Hauptkampflinie [main line of resistance] will be here ... everything we have must be on the coast. Believe me, Lang, the first twenty-four hours of the invasion will be decisive ... for the Allies, as well as Germany, it will be the longest day.�
Cornelius Ryan decided on the title of the book based on this statement from Rommel.
The book is divided into three segments named �The Wait�, which describes the events and decisions on both the Allied and German sides leading up to the assault; �The Night�, which describes the colossal airborne assaults and paratroop landings which started the Invasion and �The Day�, which describes the epic beach assaults that occurred on the shores between the mouth of the Orne River near Caen to the base of Cotentin peninsula with five major invasion beaches codenamed Omaha, Utah, Sword, June and Gold.
Cornelius Ryan packs all the horrific intensity of the beach assaults through eyewitness accounts, which makes the reader feel he is right there on the beachfront. This can be perceived from one such experience taken from the book, that describes the action from �Bloody Omaha�.
Sergeant Barton A. Davis of the 299th Engineer Combat Battalion saw an assault boat bearing down on him. It was filled with 1/ Division men and was coming straight in through the obstacles. There was a tremendous explosion and the boat disintegrated. It seemed to Davis that everyone in it was thrown into the air all at once. Bodies and parts of bodies landed all around the flaming wreckage. �I saw black dots of men trying to swim through the gasoline that had spread on the water and as we wondered what to do a headless torso flew a good fifty feet through the air and landed with a sickening thud near us.� Davis did not see how anyone could have lived through the explosion, but two men did. They were pulled out of the water, badly burned but alive.
Even though this is a rather slim volume ‘The Longest Day� captures all the glory, bravery, carnage, agony, tragedy and disgrace of such an epic event � an event that saw about 90,000 British & American troops in the beach invasion, about 20,000 airborne troops, 5000 vessels and 11000 aircraft sorties � beautifully. What makes this book standout from the rest is the way in which the author makes it an experience for the reader by bringing key moments of the epic battle through the feelings of actual participants rather than deeply investigating the actual strategies and unit by unit combat descriptions. This is a classic military history piece, which is highly recommended for anyone interested in military conflicts, world war literature or history.
The 1962 massive hit war movie with the same title was based on this book. Detailed Reveiw with photographs can be accessed from ...more
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