maddogdrivethru.net

Good read, good news for the good guys ... us.

But it wont be easy.

Sounds plausible.

Got myself another batch of books:

Kronborg, Ove C - Et hjorne av en haers sammenbrud: The German 551. Volksgrenadier-Division's birth, struggle and destruction in Lithuania and East Prussia 1944-45 (In Danish)
Christensen, J.O and Iversen, R.H - Haeren ("The Army"): 400 years of Danish history (In Danish, this is JDR_Baboon's book)
Buxa,W - Weg und Schicksal der 11. Infanterie-Division (In German)
Zuehlke, M - Breakout from Juno

and

We defended Normandy (Swedish translation by Henrik Lindberg) this is a collection of German general's reports on the Normandy fighting originating from the National Archives, Washington D.C.

Quicksilver (volume 1 of the Baroque Trilogy) by Neal Stephenson. This is an excellent novel mostly set in the historical context of 17thC London as recalled by a guy that lives in e.18thC Massachusetts.

My hat is off to you. I tried to read Cryptonomicon and Seveneves and both felt like I was reading phone books or technical manuals.

As far Neal or Neils go I much prefer Gaiman.

Great read, IMHO the only flaw is his theory is too geography based.

By the bye, he predicts a 'Nightfall' in our future and may be right, after all the 'Four Horsemen' are present.

Completed Eric Haney's Inside Delta Force and Charlie Beckwith's Delta Force.

Beckwith was the founder of the unit. Haney was a plank owner (he was part of the unit when it was declared operational).

I had my wife watch one of The Unit episodes just for something different and we've now finished season two ... it seems she likes this series more than I do! But it lead me to read the books.

What I was most impressed by in both books was the descriptions of training and the preparations. I would say 1-2 orders of magnitude beyond what I expected. The unit attempted to determine to sort of lock and whether the door opened in or out for every door in the US embassy in Tehran as part of their prep to go in.

It seems they shot 5-8 hours per day many days ... Haney says this is the norm. That's a lot of shooting. In fact most of the "missions" shown in the show actually seem to resemble descriptions of the training activities more than descriptions of actual missions.

As to Beckwith, I did not realize the political battles he had to fight in the Army to get the unit created. Even after the idea had been approved, there were always generals either trying to shut the unit down or gain control of it. The amazing part of that story is that Beckwith, a mere Colonel, was able to dodge all the minefields and bring the unit into existence.

Anyway, we don't know much about this force and we shouldn't, in fact, I'd be fine it neither of these books had ever been written, but they were so I read them.

And I am aware that there are some people of claim everything Haney says is a lie. I am not one of them. I won't put him on a pedestal, but I think his descriptions of the training ring true. And all the words both Haney and Beckwith write about the Tehran operation line up pretty well. That had different perspectives, but those different perspectives line up.

Haney describes the unit's involvement in Grenada and the description is far from complementary ... mostly they flew some helicopters over some enemy AA guns, got shot up, but made it out to sea to evac their wounded, then flew back in and watched some rangers take some positions. A guy whose every word was a lie would probably make up something different.

Beckwith spent about a year with the SAS in the early 60s and that experience was what drove him to try to create a similar unit in the US Army. It took about 10 years to get approved and 2 more years to actually build the unit and make it operational. But he did it.

Both Haney and Beckwith describe the "selection course" ... which is mostly a lot of solo land navigation with ruck sack. I think the purpose of this sort of selection course is to drive the selectees past the breaking point and see if they can find it in themselves to continue. The "pass" rates given by both Haney and Beckwith are around 5% .. like 12 out of 240. Then the 12 had to go in front of a Commander's board. Beckwith and 2-3 NCOs would then grill the candidates and try to fluster them. They typically weeded out half the selectees in the commanders board. So like six out of 240 made it into the UNIT. THen it was time for training. Called "OTC" Operator Training Course. Shooting, breaking in / entry, crazy driving, spying, using drops etc. explosives ... with the shooting when they were practicing hostage rescue, they would mix live team members in with the mannequins. The live team members represented the hostages, the mannequins represented the bad guys. The assault force had to break in to the room and kill all the mannequins without hitting the live team members. And they used live ammo. All team members had to play both roles. And like everything else they did, they did it hundreds of times.

These aren't great books, but for anyone interested in the sparse information on the unit, they are worth a read. Reading them both together was useful because I could thus compare them to each other.

ok, my non-Vietnam reading break is over, back to Vietnam and SF oprations in CCN this time!

I believe that I read Beckwith's book (a long time ago) and enjoyed it.

The TV show "The Unit" was one of my "must see" tv shows when it was on. I did grow a bit disenchanted later in the series when they seemed to delve deeper into romantic entanglements (hope that was not a spoiler), but would still recommend the show.

I have not read Haney's book; I will need to check that out.

Philo Gubb, detecative.

Written by:Ellis Parker BUTLER (1869 - 1937)

Mostly it's humor. I like these stories. Really good.

This article should have been out years ago, and it was (2010) but I didn't see it: Now I am using Nook with Epub, pretty good, except doesn't support txt (few formats supported) plus they don't support or sell in Thailand.