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This book looks at eight conflicts of the cold war period, two involved Isreal and her neighbours, two of the Indo-Pakistan Wars, the prolonged Congo crisis, the Iran Iraq War, the Suez Crisis and the Falklands War. These are very different conflicts
There are four main sources of aircraft – the USA and Soviet Union provide the most types and the most aircraft, with Britain and France following on behind. China appears from time to time, with their versions of Soviet designs. Very few of the countries involved got all of their aircraft from a single source – the main exception being Iran, which ironically was still entirely equipped with American aircraft inherited from the Shah’s regime. Their opponents in Iraq were more typical, with a sizable Soviet contribution, a significant number of French aircraft, and a smattering of British Hunter jets. The Falklands is unusual in that both sides used western aircraft. The one surprise here is that the British public image of Argentine largely using French aircraft (the Mirage and Super Etendard) isn’t true – they also had a significant number of American aircraft and even one squadron equipped with British produced Canberras.
Each chapter follows the same basic format, with a brief introduction to the political background of the conflict, then a look at the aircraft and air forces on boths sides, followed by the narrative.
The majority of the chapters give us pretty much a day by day, clash by clash account of the wars in question. The exception is the Iran-Iraq War, which lasted just over eight years, making that approach impossible. Here that approach is taken for the first few days of the war, where both air forces were at full strength. However we soon see the limits of relying on imported weapons – within a month both sides were running short of both aircraft and spare parts. Unsurprisingly the USA was unwilling to provide any to the Iranian regime, while the USSR imposed an embargo on the arms trade with Iraq (at least to start with anyway). After that we get briefer details of the aerial fighting that accompanied the various offensives carried out during the war.
The book starts and ends with wars involving Britain – the debacle at Suez and the succesful liberation of the Falkland Islands, showing both how much air warfare had changed in the period, and how similar things could be, both involving British carrier aircraft.
The final chapter attempts to analysis these eight conflicts, to see if there are any lessons to be learnt. This section could do with being somewhat longer, but there are some useful conclusions here, especially to do with leadership and intelligence, which in most of these conflicts was at least as important as the technical differences between the aircraft.
Chapters
1 – Suez Crisis, 29 October-7 November 1956
2 – Congo Crisis, July 1960-June 1964
3 – Indo-Pakistan War, 1-23 September 1965
4 – Six-Day War, 5-10 June 1967
5 – Indo-Pakisatan War, 3-16 December 1971
6 – October War, 6-25 October 1973
7 – Iran-Iraq War, 22 September 1980-20 August 1988
8 – South Atlantic War, 2 April-14 June 1982
9 – Debrief
Author: Michael Napier
Edition: Paperback
Pages: 368
Publisher: Osprey
Year: 2022