(Part 2) Best military technology books according to redditors
We found 94 Reddit comments discussing the best military technology books. We ranked the 70 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.
From a previous post of mine:
The attitude, which still survives, of Britain and America towards Irish neutrality is actually pretty interesting, especially in that it is a largely manufactured one.
The American ambassador to Ireland at the time was a Mr. David Gray. Gray was extremely atypical for American ambassadors to Ireland in (at least) one major regard: he thoroughly disliked Ireland and the Irish (the feeling was mutual) and was personally convinced that the Free State was all but a Nazi puppet regime. His theories and proposals were completely at odds with the OSS, MI5, and the British Admiralty. This is not to be surprised at, as Gray was in the habit of getting his own advice from séances.
The reality of the situation was that Ireland was quite literally doing everything it could to assist the British (later Allied) war effort short of officially declaring war. Given the strategic situation in the early years of the war, and the limited usefulness of the antique (and southerly) Irish bases, Ireland was considered more helpful out of the war than in it.
Ireland agreed that all communication to the continent would go through one cable - through Britain. After Ireland seized their transmitter, this was the German embassy's only remaining line of communication with Berlin, using codes that the British had already broken (meanwhile, the British were free to use their radio transmitters). Further, the German embassy in Dublin was busy sending a flood of information on British shipping, supplied by Irish 'supporters' who were themselves supplied by MI5. The British objected strongly to Gray's demands that Ireland close the embassy for this reason.
Ireland's G2 shared completely with their Allied intelligence counterparts throughout the war. To counter Gray's machinations, the leader of the American's OSS, Gen. Donovan, wrote to Roosevelt to ensure that the true picture was kept in mind - 'The co-operation in intelligence matters offered and given by the Irish has been very full. It should be pointed out that we did not offer the Irish information in return and have given them little'.
Ireland's Lookout Posts also tracked German air traffic in the Irish Sea and Atlantic, which they transmitted in code via radio to Dublin. The British were secretly given the code, as well as being allowed to set up radar stations along the Cork and Donegal coasts, station observer sea-planes at Foynes, and station air-sea rescue boats in Killybegs. Further facilities were offered, but never taken up. To top all of that off, the Irish prepared a secret fall-back base in Tipperary for the RAF to continue to operate from in the event of an invasion of Britain itself.
While spared from German attack, Irish food and manpower was free to move to Britain where it was desperately needed. Some 70,000 men volunteered for the British armed forces, while another 200,000 filled out Britain's war economy (while America, it bears noting, remained neutral also). These are huge numbers when one considers Ireland's working (male) population.
So where does this feeling of animosity come from? It comes directly from Gray, and indirectly from a decidedly ungracious agreement between Roosevelt and Churchill.
In 1943, at the height of the U-Boat threat, the Canadian High Commissioner to Ireland suggested that if Roosevelt asked for Irish bases, De Valera might say yes. Roosevelt ran into strong opposition for a genuine request to Ireland to officially join the Allied war effort from his State Department, the Chiefs of Staff, and the OSS, as did Churchill from his advisers. British top brass maintained that the Irish bases would be more trouble than they were worth, and dismissed the idea.
Gray nonetheless seized on the scheme because he personally felt that De Valera would say no, and that would make him look bad. He went home to the US and explained to Roosevelt and Churchill a plan to publish a letter condemning Ireland for not turning over its naval bases in New York on August 14th of that year. They, in turn, thought it politically useful that De Valera be brought low in the estimation of Irish-Americans, to ensure he could not cause Anglo-American difficulties over the Irish Partition issue after the war. It was explicitly a propaganda effort for American consumption, as explained later by Gray in his own cover letter.
The letter was duly published on March 10th, 1944 (when the bases were no longer needed anyway). It did huge damage to Ireland's reputation abroad - especially amongst its target audience of Irish-Americans. It also put paid to any hope of a resolution to the Irish border question, and solidified anti-Irish feeling in Britain and among the Unionist population of Northern Ireland.
Churchill, ever the hawkish Imperialist, was delighted, and expounded upon the theme (while partially drunk) during his speech on VE Day where he congratulated Britain (i.e. himself) on not invading neutral Ireland and taking her bases by force - as he had directly threatened to do in 1939 when he needed someone else to blame for the loss of the Royal Oak at Scapa Flow (about as far from Ireland as it is possible to harbour your fleet anyway).
> This was indeed a deadly moment in our life, and if it had not been for the loyalty and friendship of Northern Ireland we should have been forced to come to close quarters with Mr. de Valera or perish forever from the earth. However, with a restraint and poise to which, I say, history will find few parallels, we never laid a violent hand upon them, which at times would have been quite easy and quite natural, and left the de Valera Government to frolic with the German and later with the Japanese representatives to their heart's content.
(It bears mentioning that Ireland did not commence any diplomatic relations with Japan at all until the mid 1950's.)
It is a sad lesson in propaganda that the same bitter message is still put about today. In response to Churchill's bravado, De Valera himself put it best:
> I would like to put a hypothetical question-it is a question I have put to many Englishmen since the last war. Suppose Germany had won the war, had invaded and occupied England, and that after a long lapse of time and many bitter struggles, she was finally brought to acquiesce in admitting England's right to freedom, and let England go, but not the whole of England, all but, let us say, the six southern counties.
> These six southern counties, those, let us suppose, commanding the entrance to the narrow seas, Germany had singled out and insisted on holding herself with a view to weakening England as a whole, and maintaining the securing of her own communications through the Straits of Dover.
> Let us suppose further, that after all this had happened, Germany was engaged in a great war in which she could show that she was on the side of freedom of a number of small nations, would Mr. Churchill as an Englishman who believed that his own nation had as good a right to freedom as any other, not freedom for a part merely, but freedom for the whole--would he, whilst Germany still maintained the partition of his country and occupied six counties of it, would he lead this partitioned England to join with Germany in a crusade? I do not think Mr. Churchill would.
> Would he think the people of partitioned England an object of shame if they stood neutral in such circumstances? I do not think Mr. Churchill would.
> Mr. Churchill is proud of Britain's stand alone, after France had fallen and before America entered the War.
> Could he not find in his heart the generosity to acknowledge that there is a small nation that stood alone not for one year or two, but for several hundred years against aggression; that endured spoliations, famines, massacres in endless succession; that was clubbed many times into insensibility, but that each time on returning consciousness took up the fight anew; a small nation that could never be got to accept defeat and has never surrendered her soul?
Sources:
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As for signing the book of condolences:
In response to vitriolic international criticism over his gesture, De Valera insisted it was a question of diplomatic protocol and that failing to send his respects would amount to "an act of unpardonable discourtesy."
In a letter to Robert Brennan, the Irish ambassador in Washington, De Valera wrote: "During the whole of the war, Dr. Hempel’s conduct was irreproachable. He was always friendly and invariably correct -- in marked contrast with [U.S. envoy David] Gray. I certainly was not going to add to [Hempel's] humiliation in the hour of defeat."
He certainly knew that doing so was not going to look good - his own ministers begged him not to - but the protocol of the thing would have been too much for De Valera to ignore, being as he was such a stickler. He also specified that his actions in no way condoned the policies of Hitler's regime.
It's also what happens when a certain "Exceptional Nation" lets itself be turned into a Golem and throws away its European-based "war-as-extension-of-politics" in favor of the "Judeo-Christian morals" which hold the enemy to be subhuman embodiments of evil.
Read this guy to learn the difference between war before and after 1933.
Greetings, fellow warship enthusiasts! I regret that I am just now becoming aware of this wonderful community. I am Chris Miller, and over 30 years ago I wrote a book with my brother, David Miller.
David was a wonderfully intelligent man, who absolutely loved military intelligence and equipment assessment. He served in Her Majesty's Armed Forces, and afterwards went on to publish numerous books on these topics.
In 1985 he approached me with an offer to assist him in writing his latest book: Modern Naval Combat. It very well may have been the highlight of my life, working on a book, delving deep into a subject that we both loved deeply. We did not set out to write that book in some search of profit. Hardly! Rather, we did it to share our love of military hardware.
However, it deeply troubles me that a person is blatantly disrespecting our hard work and effort, by photocopying our entire book, page by page, and sharing it on this community. While the book has been out of print for many years, is still available used throughout online book sellers - including Amazon - some for less than a quid!
I would not begrudge a few photocopies, but it goes beyond the pale to post the entire book. Accordingly, I have attached an album of the remaining pages that the gentleman has not yet posted. I would rather share it with you wonderful people, a gift from one of the authors.
Album of Remaining Pages of Modern Naval Combat
Other books that David authored:
Modern Submarine Warfare
Modern Land Combat
Carriers: The Men and the Machine
Modern Sub-hunters
Its a good book to provide their side of the story, and Further good reading subjects:
is pretty good to describe the foundation
My personal opinion is congress/senate and the public got really hung up on numbers. Boots on the ground, the authorized amount and the budget for those deployed.
They are assets, and when we send and authorize them one of the parties (public, through senate/ congress) gets really snagged on one thing.
Thus the Military industrial complex gets play and has a legitimate need.
The problem is the contracting out of political and real life capital. Wars should be fought and have a price to them.
That is our duty. That is the price we pay. When we contract that out things get really grey really fucking fast.
Love it if anyone can add onto this discussion from a broader perspective.
to answer you directly;
Get yourself a Ranger Handbook
https://www.amazon.com/Training-Circular-3-21-76-Ranger-Handbook/dp/154642315X/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=ranger+handbook+pocket+size&qid=1573579298&sprefix=ranger+handbook&sr=8-1
Apologies for the potato pictures but I'd rather spend money on guns
Took two of my WW2 snipers out the other day. The Swede is shooting 140 gr Bergers on top of 40 gr of RL-22 with Privi brass and CCI primers. The No4 is shooting 174 gr SMKs on top of 38.5 gr of H4895 with Hornady brass and CCI primers.
The Swede shot MOA with flyers that were entirely my fault not the rifle's. The trigger is a typical two stage but the second stage could be measured in ounces. She's wearing a 5X Hensoldt as Swedish marked 4X Ajack scopes are very rare and priced accordingly. The glass was fantastic for a 75 year old scope with only a minor loss of clarity and yellowing on the edges. Shooting the M41b was fantastic and my only further piece of gear would be a leather repro cheek pad.
The No4 was a bit of a bear to get running well. It came to me sporterized and took many months to fit the stock so that she would shoot reasonably well. The rifle turned in 2.5 MOA groups with some serious flyers. While the cheekpiece, the low scope and the ground off front sight are nice touches this is like putting a silk tie on a pig. Enfields are not accurate rifles by nature and it took much trial and error to shim her effectively. Trying to get it right led me to purchasing Peter Laidler's book on the subject which I highly recommend. It took many months, shims and raw linseed oil to properly bed the rifle.
u/CadeusVao this one's for you
Hope you folks enjoy my bad pictures and decent shooting
Because they're just so incredibly secret.
I have the Swiss equivalent, also a good read
​
https://www.amazon.com/Total-Resistance-H-Von-Dach/dp/1607963043
Here's the manual - https://www.amazon.com/Training-Circular-Subterranean-Environments-November/dp/1979828660
And for everyone talking about China, the article repeatedly mentions North Korea, specifically having over 5,000 out of the total 11,000 known underground military bases....
Advice to live by.
Edit: In addition to the parent poster's top notch wisdom, read _the_elements_ofseamanship, and look up all the words you don't know.
They're essentially "at war" for years, and having to shift back to "home" mode for a few hours each day. People are not really mentally equipped to do that.
This book is about the Royal Air Force MQ-9 Reaper crews, but they get into a lot of how it mentally and psychologically takes a toll on them. It's an interesting read if you want to get into that field.
There is a series of books published by the us air force in the 1970s that translates Soviet texts on military theory. They were books with limited print runs in the USSR that were for officers and generals and were considered important enough by the US to be worth studying so they could “know thy enemy”. After stalin died soviet military theory was let off the leash and was allowed to develop, so the americans were trying to follow developments in Soviet military thinking.
As a PDF overview, this one will be useful and give you a good feel of what these kind of texts are like.:
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/reports/2005/R416.pdf
The soviets divided military theory in to three parts: strategy, tactics and operational art. If you want the “big picture” soviet view on war you absolutely need a copy of this:
Marxism-leninism on war and army:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Marxism-Leninism-Army-Soviet-View/dp/141020247X/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1540454140&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=marxism+leninism+war+and+army&dpPl=1&dpID=51cS5oRMySL&ref=plSrch
For a sort of general outline of the marxist theory on the use of tactics this one is worth a look but is very heavy on marxist theory:
The basic principles of operational art and tactics, a soviet view:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Basic-Principles-Operational-Art-Tactics/dp/1410201147/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1540454260&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=operational+art+tactics+soviet&dpPl=1&dpID=41NN2KG2QBL&ref=plSrch
There are a number of texts avaliable on archive.org which may help you understand the soviet mindset a bit better. Below is probably some of the most relevant (but there are more and its well worth a look):
Soviet Officers handbook:
https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA046591
Tactics:
https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA183185
The initial period of the war:
https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA168483/page/n5
Armed forces of the soviet state:
https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA038547/page/n7
The people, the army, the commander (i.e. soviet views on the role military leaders in war):
https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA055587/page/n1
The “dtic.mil” address comes up alot as its declassified us military documents. https://discover.dtic.mil
I just stuck the word “soviet” in to search and got this so there is “even more” out there:
https://search.usa.gov/search/docs/?utf8=✓&affiliate=dtic.all&dc=5191&query=Soviet&commit=
The same for rand corporation (us military think tank ):
https://www.rand.org/search.html?query=Soviet
And pdf files from www.cia.gov comes up in google search results quite a bit too.
That’s probably going to drown you in primary source so enjoy! :D
I actually have, although mine is an earlier version. You can get this bad boy off Amazon for $20. It is well worth it IMHO.
Another good related pub is this guy which is kind of like a supplement to that first one. Just the first chapter alone, Discussion Leading Techniques, is well worth the read. It talks about the difference between a lecture, demonstration, or guided discussion, advantages and disadvantages of each, and how to properly run those including common pitfalls or mistakes. And that's just some of the stuff in the first chapter. It should be required reading for any Sailor 360 leader.
Storm of Steel by Ernst Junger: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm_of_Steel
War against war by Ernst Friedrich: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0941104184
Edit: First author thinks the war is a grand adventure while the other is very against it. Waw is not a novell though.
https://www.amazon.com/Unconventional-Warfare-Techniques-References-31-200-1/dp/0975900978
Also, no No.5 rifles were ever fitted with slotted upper handguards. I spent a chunk of change on a rather detailed book that covers these things down to the prototypes. You'll find Wikipedia a poor substitute for actual firearms books. These old guys dug through miles of government paperwork to research these rifles and they loathe putting that information online.
That was one fluffy article. Not a clue about the book or about Jeff Flake. Not even the book's title? I guess it's this : https://www.amazon.com/Senator-Presents-Wastebook-Porkemon-January/dp/1973708094/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1501114431&sr=8-1&keywords=jeff+flake
Edit : It's not at the library either?
>they're going to heat up and anneal and burst eventually.
Well sure, but we're talking a hypothetical situation where we get unlimited barrel changes, and they have barrels now that are rated for 15k before replacement. I don't know enough about thermal dynamics to make a claim one way or another, but given the water cooling on the Vickers is for the barrels and not the receiver, I feel like there shouldn't be a significant variance between the weapons in that area.
Unfortunately the only evidence for the 5mm round claim is in a book that costs $500+, and is based on the testimony of someone who was in a armorer's class but not actually involved in pulling the trigger, as it were, and consequently imprecise on things such as how often the barrel was changed ("every hour to 1 1/2 hours") to what the actual sustained rate of fire was ("We never heard the gun not firing in anything but the shortest time"). There is also no clarity on barrel replacement, but I'm given to believe they were just completely replaced, as burned gunpowder (particularly in older ammo, and especially in .30-06) is corrosive and would affect the barrel regardless of heat.
Still, working on the assumption the test was true, I suppose we don't really have any way to settle if a 240B could hack it that long, but it wouldn't surprise me. The only piece I could think of that may wear early would be the extractor pin spring, or perhaps the springs in the feed pawls, but one of the many (and varied) interpretations of Grand Old Lady's retelling mentioned springs there as well, so who knows. TBH, the FN MAG the 240B is based on is mostly using the same era tech (the trigger and feed assembly is pulled straight from the German MG42), so the weapons aren't even all that fundamentally different.
>The next time I read someone claiming the AK to be more resistant to foreign matter ingress than the AR, I might scream.
The logic behind those claims always seemed awful, too. "They use stamped parts, so they're stronger!", or "its built a little more loose so crud just falls out!".... 🤔
You keep your damned rifle clean, you won't have any problems. I spent two weeks once playing OPFOR for some Q course guys, and the instructor let us use some of their M4A1s ("you don't even have to clean them!") and 15k blanks between 5 of us. We didn't have a single jam, despite doing stupid shit like dumping 30rnd mags w/ a rifle in each hand for hours, until one of the rifles got kicked into a muddy ditch when they were practicing body searches, etc...
> Ok, so you are using divine revelation. The problem is that I can't tell your revelations from those of someone who is just crazy.
Fair enough. I'm not asking that you accept "my revelations" merely that you go about discovering your own.
> Right. Like with most conspiracy theories, I don't think you understand how big this conspiracy would need to be. You are claiming that an entire field of science is being hidden from the public. Actually, not just the public, but also all other scientists, and in every country. This isn't a specific secret known only to a few people.
The US government classifies an estimated 560 million pages of documents each year. For scholars engaged in political, historical, scientific, or any other archival work, the grim reality is that most of their government’s activities are secret.
I do understand how big the conspiracy would need to be, and it is that big. Except you overestimate the difficulty of maintaining such a massive conspiracy. Once you own all the universities and control almost all of the scientific funding dollars it's not difficult to control, filter, and restrict the direction of mainstream science.
Except it's not all hidden some of the information is available through document research investigation. It's only hidden in academia it's not hidden within the bowels of corporate and classified scientific research which is where all the money and research is really happening. It's all happening within the military industrial complex outside of the view of public. What you think of as "modern science" is merely the old science. You don't realize how big the conspiracy really is, we're dealing with a "breakaway civilization" here not just some hidden research.
The world's top scientists are all involved in classified research operations operating inside the military industrial complex and you've never even heard these scientists names because they were trained inside the classified projects from an early age, trained in the real physics, the real science. They have the "real physics" that is denied to the public and they are using it to achieve things that would blow your mind.
Since I jused the psi research as a data point that's where I'll get you started:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingo_Swann
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Targ
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Puthoff
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRI_International
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Project
etc, but this is just the old stuff from 30+ years ago. Billions in funding are still pouring into these bizarre psi projects.
> Sooo, does the James Randi Education Foundation just kidnap and disappear everyone who succeeds at their million dollar challenge then?
of course not. The physicists involved in the deep black projects who have the "real physics" are able to achieve all sorts of phenomena that would win Randi's prize, however they know what would happen to their families and themselves if they tried to go public with any of the information, and they know that it would never make it into the tightly controlled scientific journals anyways. They would be putting their lives in great peril without the hope of actually accomplishing anything.
http://www.afterdisclosure.com/2011/04/breakaway.html
http://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Plain-Sight-Beyond-X-Files/dp/096779952X
http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Antigravity-Propulsion-Classified-Technology/dp/159143078X
lets not let the topic of conversation drift too far away from religion though.. I don't wanna get too off-topic. If you want to know more about what I'm talking about here just message me.
Dr. Richard Sauder's books and research: http://www.amazon.com/Underwater-Underground-Bases-Richard-Sauder/dp/0932813887