FATAL DECISIONS
ERRORS AND BLUNDERS IN WORLD WAR II
EDMUND BLANDFORD
AIRLIFE PUBLISHING
1999
First Edition.
In the heat of battle it is all too easy for the fighting man to become disorientated, confused or to misread a tactical situation. This is true of any fighting unit operating in the air, on land or at sea. By today's standards, communication facilities in World War II were primitive, unreliable and prone to enemy interception. It is these major factors which are generally at the root of the incidents of war that are included in this book. What, in hindsight, may now look like an hilarious blunder, was probably a matter of life or death and caused by a decision taken under the stress and pressure of combat.
This is not a book about the major wartime errors made by politicians or generals, for those have already been analysed by historians many times over. This is a book about some of the lesser-known incidents involving airmen, sailors and soldiers from both the Allied and Axis forces, men and women who, three years before the war may have been at school, working in a bank or farming the land. Some stories will make you smile; some will make you cry.
24 x 16 cm. viii + 242 pp.
Very good + condition, a little light creasing to top edge of dust jacket but otherwise very clean and tidy.