Review: Night Action : MTB Flotilla at War
Pen & Sword Books is part of The Barnsley Chronicle newspaper group. The Barnsley Chronicle is one of the UK’s oldest provincial newspapers and one of the few weeklies still in private ownership. It was launched in 1858 and is due to celebrate its 150th anniversary in 2008.
Over recent years the company has continued to grow and has added new imprints to its core area of military history. Pen & Sword now specialise in all areas of military history, naval and maritime history, aviation, local history, family history, collectables and antiques, nostalgia and true crime.
With over 200 books published every year, Pen & Sword has established itself as a specialist book publisher.
Recap
This memoir is Peter Dickens’ account of his experiences as the young commander of the 21st MTB Flotilla during 1942-43, mainly in the North Sea and the Channel. In all the annals of the war at sea, comparatively little has been written about the role of the torpedo boat, and yet these small and vulnerable boats, travelling at high speed amid storms and gunfire, and usually under the cover of darkness, managed to closely engage enemy convoys and escorts in high-speed attacks and wreak havoc among the German supply lines. Like the sailors who fought against the U-boats in the battle of the Atlantic, Dickens and his comrades were experiencing a new kind of warfare and had to hit upon the techniques and tactics as they went along; their kind of action called for great courage, spilt-second timing and complete understanding between captain and crew. Night Action is a lively and thrilling account, but also one which is frank and carefully considered; there is humour but the horror of war is never far away and the author conveys to the reader a sharp sense of the reality of those operations in a way that no history book can do.
The Good
The author presents an affable image of himself with humor and modesty. Regardless of all of the plentiful flaws of the book, Peter seems as though he’d be the type of guy you would wish to know.
The Bad
The book was… boring. I had to do all that I could to actually finish it. It’s not that the subject matter isn’t interesting – it’s just that all of the missions generally work out to be mirror images of the others preceding them. The book could have been a third the size and still gotten it’s point across.
The Ugly
The editing is horrible. There are over a hundred typos in the book which unfortunately distracted me to no end. The photos in the book have been reprinted so many times that they have lost all remaining detail – some are no more than black blobs on the page.
Product Summary
Name: Night Action : MTB Flotilla at War
Author: Peter Dickens
Publisher: Pen & Sword Books
Category: Book
Cost: £7.99
SKU: N/A
ISBN: 9781848320123
Rating
