"Firing into the Brown" #11 - Blitzkrieg, Italien, "Starfish" and stuff..

"So Carnehan weeds out the pick of his men, and sets the two of the Army to show them drill and at the end of two weeks the men can manoeuvre about as well as Volunteers. So he marches with the Chief to a great big plain on the top of a mountain, and the Chiefs men rushes into a village and takes it; we three Martinis firing into the brown of the enemy".

Kipling "The Man Who Would Be King"

Time for another update...

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Book finished and per the post where I mentioned and expressed some doubts about the slightly sensationalist statements on the front, time for me to review and advise whether the book is indeed worthy of all the glitter on the front..  in short, does it describe a whole new raft of myths and realities, is it "stunningly revisionist"..  errr...   or not?

Well.. the short answer is "no"... not surprisingly..  to be honest I wasn't expecting it to be..  Hastings, Beevor, Keegan and others have been raking over the first hand written and audio testimony for years now, and it is unlikely that they with their researchers would have missed anything "stunningly revisionist", and based on this book they didn't..

What we have is a very readable history of the Battle of France from the start of 'Fall Gelb' ('Case Yellow' - the first part of the assault - ie. "hold in place on the Belgian flank while the Panzers swung through the Ardennes and round the other flank" or as Captain Mainwaring called it, "a typical shabby Nazi trick" 😁) to the end of 'Fall Rot' ('Case Red' - the breakthrough, defeat, and occupation of France)

There are no surprises here - the author covers it all (very well), but the editors, book designers and whatever have done him no favours by promising all the snake oil on the cover.. so what we DO have is a clear and concise account of the failings of the French army (operationally, tactically, mentally welded to their fortresses, and the concept of the positional battle, completely unable to react as quickly as they needed to), and we have the Germans, flushed from success in Poland where they have learned hard lessons on the actual field of battle, and with leaders like Guderian, Manstein and Rommel, absolutely overflowing with confidence in the new Panzer arm, trying desperately to persuade the more conservative elements to let them do what was planned, and eventually succeeding.

An excellent book, the descriptions of the condition of the German tank troops and panzer grenadiers, after being awake for days at a time, was gripping. 

Very good, I'll give it 8 out of 10 despite the cover snake oil, but in my opinion, the absolute go to account of the campaign is still Alistair Horne's book "To Lose a Battle" which I reviewed here [clicky] and very much recommend..

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Work has been going on with that promised upgrade to the standard of the Royal Italien..  but then I looked at them and thought..  "hmm, they're a bit shiny"..   and then "hmm...  bases are a bit thin and warped"...  so...

Ready for new bases..

Stuck on and a coat of 'dull cote' applied by brush..

Looking better..

New flag offered up.. bases flocked...

Doesn't that look better than the old one..  pleased with that... 

Flag courtesy of David [clicky] at "Not By Appointment"...

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Was doing some reading this week prompted by a comment I read in one of the local papers about decoy operations in my local harbour during WWII..

The islands you can see in the middle of the harbour (which are now bird sanctuaries) were used in WWII as decoy sites to lure German air raids away from nearby Portsmouth harbour. 

Code named "Starfish" this [clicky], and this [clicky], are particularly interesting reads on the decoy operation and how they worked (electric light and oil flamed fires primarily)...  by all accounts they were very successful; on the night of 17/18 April 1941, over 140 enemy aircraft were lured away from Portsmouth and in excess of 200 air-dropped munitions fell semi-harmlessly into Langstone Harbour and Farlington Marshes although inevitably some bombs dropped long and landed on Hayling Island causing casualties (including anti aircraft gunners based at Sinah Common - SC in the map)

I cycle past this bunker most days on my way to work (part of my route is across the top of the marshes) and had no idea what it's function was until I started reading up on the operation..

© Copyright Mike Searle

It's a control bunker for the 'QL' bombing decoy site on Farlington Marshes (FC on the map). It operated with a separate 'Starfish' site whose control building was on the east side of the marsh (FC2) - everything controlled from "FP" (for Fort Purbrook) on top of the hill where they would have had the perfect view..

We're surrounded by history - must keep an eye out for that second Farlington bunker on my next cycle..

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"Laters", as the young people are want to say...