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I must admit I was expecting this book to largely focus on the familiar type of Special Forces raids carried out by the Commandoes, SAS or SOE, but the remit is rather wider than that. Jacobs has included a number of air raids - including the famous attack on Amiens Prison and key daylight raids, and attacks that were part of larger battles, such as the Swordfish attacks on the Bismarckor the successful attacks on key gun batteries at Dieppe. In most cases I agree with their inclusion, although the air attacks on the Bismarckare borderline, and the inclusion of the attack on Arnhem seems rather unjustified - that was a full scale offensive involving multiple divisions, and very much not intended to be a raid.
The book covers thirty very different raids, which means that none are covered in a great deal of detail, but on the other hand if you are over familiar with an attack, you'll soon move onto another one. Amongst the unfamiliar topics were a Special Forces raid on the Litani River in Syria, Operation Postmaster (what would have been known as a 'cutting out' raid during the Napoleonic Wars, conducted in semi-neutral Spanish colonial waters) and some of the raids of the Small Scale Raiding Force. The main focus is on the war against Germany and Italy, but there are also two examples from the Far East - the first Chindit raid, and a mini-submarine attack on Japanese cruisers.
The individual chapters are well written and well balanced, and the result is an interesting cross section of the smaller scale British operations of the Second World War (with one or two larger scale actions dropped in).
Chapters
1 - Bridges at Maastricht
2 - Italian Fleet at Taranto
3 - Attack on the Gneisenau
4 - Sink the Bismarck
5 - Litani River
6 - Raid on Bremen
7 - Rommel's Headquarters
8 - Vaagso
9 - Postmaster
10 - Channel Dash
11 - Bruneval
12 - St Nazaire
13 - Boulogne Harbour
14 - Augsburg
15 - Barricade
16 - Hess and Goebbels Gun Batteries at Dieppe
17 - Reconnaissance of Saint Honorine-des-Pertes
18 - Barce
19 - Basalt
20 - Cockleshell Heroes
21 - Chindits
22 - Vemork Heavy Water Plant, Telemark
23 - Dam Busters
24 - Midgets Against the Tirpitz
25 - Reconnaissance of the Normandy Beaches
26 - Amiens Prison
27 - Pegasus Bridge
28 - The Bridge Too Far
29 - Lake Comacchio
30 - Midgets Against the Takao and Myoko
Author: Peter Jacobs
Edition: Hardcover
Pages: 256
Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
Year: 2015