Customer Reviews

Alamein

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Bungay's book on Alamein is quite different from that of Latimer's. In a sense, they compliment each other very well. While Latimer focuses on the actual combat, giving you a "worm's eye view" in many cases, Bungay choses to focus more on the institutions and leaders that participated.

In this sense, Bungay reviews the armies that fought: Italians, UK/Commonwealth, and German. Logistics, politics, morale, leadership, docrtine, and tactics are all assessed. By doing so, Bungay provides a wealth of information on why the battle developed as it did. The actual battle is dispensed with in a chapter or so, more as a way of demonstrating that the institutional factors predicted the nature of the battle.

This is a good book, particularly if you are interested in how command, doctrine, tactics, and politics influence what occurs on the battlefield. If you are interested only in a straightforward "blow by blow" of the battle, then Latimer's book is recommended.

As with "The Most Dangerous Enemy" Mr. Bungay looks for the reasons why a battle is won or lost in other parts such a logistics, supply, training, chain of command, etcetera. It is a very good change from the typical books where all the success or failure is charged upon the fighting soldiers. This book shows how a battle outcome is very much decided before starting

This is a battle that I have read a lot about. It was in WW2 terms, a small battle but in terms of consequences, it had major significance. It was a battle that probably Britain did not even need to fight but for their morale, they had to fight and win.

Having said that for this reason much has been written on this battle but Stephen Bungay has managed to put a new twist on the battle. Whereas most people discuss the actual battle, he tends to discuss the factors that go around the battle as well eg the supply line, generalship and the respective airforce. In a very interesting way.

I find myself disputing one minor point eg German air force kills where he states that on 9/01/42 Marseille shot down 17 British aircraft in one day. In fact on that day, the British lost 11 planes to all causes including AA fire. As pilots often tend to exaggerate their kills, Stephen Bungay should have been more careful in accepts such facts on face value. On the other hand I do agree with his conclusions that as the *star* German pilots tended to consider their purpose to build up scores not the mission and to some extent the German system encouraged this aim, this resulted in the German airforce not doing their mission properly.

If you are looking for a book to start you off on Alamein or looking for a book to give you some new insight into this battle, this book is for you.