Tag: Nonfiction

The Worst Pilot Ever

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On May 22, 2020, Pakistan International Airlines Flight 8303 crashed in Karachi, killing 98 people. Its pilot, Sajjad Gul, may have exhibited the worst judgement and skill of any pilot involved in an air disaster ever, and he and almost a hundred other people paid the price.

In written and video form, it’s horrifying to behold. There was good weather, a familiar and established plane, no mechanical issues, no foul play, and nothing save for someone who went in on a crash course, had countless opportunities to step back from the brink, and did not.

Absent pilots who crashed on purpose or otherwise did things like make bets that they could land blindfolded (they couldn’t) or reenact the flight of Icarus, this is the least competent aircrew I’ve seen. By the final too-late moments, Gul and copilot Usman Azam were apparently trying to do two contradictory things (which gives you a sign of how bad the crew resource management was).

Review: Tank Warfare

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Jeremy Black’s Tank Warfare is a history of the century-plus history of the metal tracked armored vehicle known as the tank. Published in 2020, it wasn’t able to cover the wars in Ukraine and Nagorno-Karabakh, but that’s not its fault. There are however a significant amount of things that are its fault.

The book is a popular history broad-brush overview. Perhaps its biggest weakness is that it’s too broad for its own good. Tangets towards every tank developed and exported by everyone in the time period happen at the expense of actually exploring the topic. Which would be more tolerable if it hadn’t actually focused on World War I in depth simply because there were few types of tanks to cover. The balanced look at the earliest AFVs there give a picture of what might have been.

This is basically just a generic coffee table tank book, but it had the potential to be more.

What Artillery Mobility Means

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From the Heavy OPFOR Tactical:

Now a 199X Soviet-patterned formation isn’t going to be representative of everything (in particular, the commander is not always going to double as a forward observer), but it’s worth noting that the movement involves narrow movement around different parts of the same observed, prepared area, not wide ranging, sweeping kiting.

Now redeployment is another story, and it’s where the artillery is going to be more inherently vulnerable and varies a lot on the circumstances. IE not so much in a stabilized front like WWI, post-1951 Korea, or contemporary Ukraine, but a lot in a classic Fuldapocalypse, 2003 Iraq, or the Southern African brush. It also depends on how much the artillery has to actually fire (because if it’s forced into moving/hiding, then it’s effectively suppressed).

So for the fictional case study of the Soviet-Romanian War:

  • The northern front is going to be advancing extremely rapidly, close to the best-case paper projections. Deployed artillery will cover the armies when they have to stop, but even the Sovereign Union will struggle to keep their mega-barrages during the rapid advance. Thankfully (for the invaders) enemy counter-artillery capabilities are very weak, especially in the context.
  • The southern front has a lot fewer SPGs (and even less advanced ones) and has to bludgeon its way across a very wide river and through fortified areas. There’s just less room to move and the opponent’s capabilities (due to their better units and C3I on this front) are more dangerous.

Review: Is There Life After Football

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Is There Life After Football: Surviving The NFL

A look at life as an American Football player by sociologists and former NFL player James Koonce, Is There Life After Football is a very interesting and evenhanded tale of how football players (and to a degree many other athletes) struggle culturally. While very few of its points are surprising or shocking, it’s well-written and handled.

The authors are eager to debunk some of the skewed and sensationalist claims of football players recklessly spending piles of money and then ending up as brain-damaged hobos. Careful to cite formal studies, they point out that there isn’t a disproportionately high amount of either financial or legal trouble amongst NFL veterans (a point others such as former player Merrill Hoge have made)-but that it still can and does often happen, with a look at the cultural dynamics to see why.

Indeed this manages to mostly avoid the twin sportswriting perils of what I call the “Johnny Manziel” and “Colin Kaepernick” paths, to use two quarterbacks who both got (in?)famous for things that had nothing to do with their play on the field. The Manziel route is classic media focusing on the freak show excesses, portraying the players as overpaid, under-mature babies, often with moral scolding. (Spoiler alert: Some players are just that). The Kaepernick route is the more modern “sensibility” in which every single player is an underpaid exploited victim of Evil Capitalist Society.

If I had to quibble, I’d say that they lump NFL players too closely together. The stats are skewed by short-career replacement level players, and the compartmenalization of different positions and paths is well-known. Their talk of the “conveyor belt” should have brought more attention to hyped prospects who flame out. The authors mention old-timers who had to work in the offseason and bubble fringe players who knew very well that they were living on the edge. But I’d be curious to see the end result of the worst of all worlds-a sheltered pampered college stardom followed by just legitimately not having the talent to match at the pro level.

But these are minor concerns for an excellent book.

Review: Super Mirage 4000

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Super Mirage 4000

Finally translated into English, this is a look at what was to France what the Avro Arrow was to Canada, the TSR-2 was to Britain, the Lavi was to Israel, and the Osorio tank was to Brazil. (Or what the AMX-32 and AMX-40 tanks were to… France).

It’s what you’d expect from a small coffee table book whose sources came from inside the program: A combination of knowledge and bias, mixed with tidbits without being the deepest. This isn’t a bad thing if you know what you’re getting into, and the plane is certainly worthy of such a book.

Review: Three Week Professionals

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Three Week Professionals

Though not the deepest sports book, Ted Kluck’s Three Week Professionals tells the story of the 1987 NFL replacement players with humor and the right tone. On one hand, the players had more of a justification for striking than was often the case given the lack of free agency and the sport being incredibly harsh. On the other, it was poorly handled and working-class people even at the time thought little of it.

As both a time capsule and a short breezy history, this book is good. Not deep, but it’s not supposed to be. It is fun and that’s what matters.

Review: The War of Return

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The War of Return

A very timely book, Einat Wilf and Adi Schwartz’s The War of Return is a look at the Israel-Palestinian conflict. That the two support a two-state solution and a return of Israel to pre-1967 borders makes it all the more credible. Trying to go and see why the Palestinians have been more intractable than even the other Arab states, they come to a “temporary UN program”.

I knew about the legitimate beefs the Palestinians have with Israel (yes they exist), and how the other Arab nations have used them entirely as political props and tools for decades without wanting to care for them. Yet the key in the lock they’ve explained is the UNRWA, which ended up becoming both a local government (seriously) with an international fig leaf and something that fanned the fires by using the term “refugee” in a way completely different than what everyone else, including the rest of the UN, uses.

(Short oversimplified version: The UNHCR which handles refugees literally everywhere, has a narrow definition and formal apoliticality. Once someone is settled, they aren’t a “refugee” anymore. So WRT Syria, if they’re settled they’re no longer a refugee. Be it in Turkey, Germany, the UAE, Ireland, America, or Bangladesh, that’s that. Also, whether they were pro-or-anti-Assad is irrelevant in that case. In contrast, the UNRWA has effectively made every single Palestinian family into a dynasty of “refugees”.)

It’s hard not to read this book and think that just a bit of negotiation here and a settlement there can still work (or could even before the current war). This makes it a sad but excellent and true story.

A Thousand Words: Jodorowsky’s Dune

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Jodorowsky’s Dune

In the early-mid 1970s, arthouse filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky ended up helming an “adaptation” of Dune. The quotes are deliberate as the movie and its tone would have been Starship Troopers/The Natural levels of intentionally different from the book. In 2013, the story of the most extravagant and absurd movie that never was was finally told in the titular documentary.

This is a great production. Everyone is clearly enjoying themselves as they talk about how the production got more and more crazy. Jodorowsky had his own son play a major role, and of course the son talks about it decades later. The art and effects brought together such figures as Jean “Moebius” Giraud, Dan O’Bannon, and H. R. Giger, the latter two of whom would make a monster movie that was a little successful. Yet the all-star cast was the craziest, featuring Orson Welles (paid in free food) as Baron Harkonnen, Salvador Dali, and Mick Jagger.

What makes the documentary shine is its soundtrack, with Kurt Stenzel’s minimalist electronic score being both a perfect accent and a great piece of music in its own right. (Although I’m biased because I like minimal electronic music, fair warning). The cinematography is also effective.

If I had to have one quibble, it’s that the documentary didn’t have the necessary devil’s advocate/reactor scram button to bring things down to earth. The movie is mentioned as being impossible, but in the sense it was too ambitious for Hollywood. In actuality, it would have been unreleasably bizzare, bound to burn money in its production, and simply strange. (There are scenes in at least some versions of Jodorowsky’s Dune that the documentary doesn’t mention, likely because they’re too weird and/or gross). If it actually got out the door, Jodorowsky’s Dune would probably just have been a bloated mess like Marlon Brando’s The Island of Dr. Moreau.

Still, this is a great documentary about a great story, even if it wouldn’t have been a great movie.

Review: Eastern Front 1945

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Eastern Front 1945

An Osprey book on the air war in WWII’s final year, Eastern Front 1945 is about the often-overlooked in the west clash in the eastern skies. It basically does every Osprey book thing right. While it’s not the most detailed, it provides an excellent overview of the somewhat different air war (ie, where the P-39 shined even as it flopped in other theaters).

One thing I particularly liked was how the book accurately showed the air campaign’s influence on postwar Soviet/Russian doctrine. Instead of a “big blue blanket” smothering every enemy in its tracks, it was focused on targeted air superiority and supporting maneuver formations. Which led to February 1945 when the Luftwaffe actually regained air superiority for a time. ( In short, they pulled more or less every propeller fighter away from the fruitless bomber interceptions and were were able to operate from intact developed airbases while the Soviets were worn and had their field strips wrecked by bad weather)

It’s a good look at both Soviet air doctrine being successful and at the eastern air war.

Review: Stuck On The Drawing Board

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Stuck On The Drawing Board: Unbuilt British Commercial Aircraft Since 1945

Passenger planes made in Britain followed an almost exactly stereotypical British pattern: At first bold and trend-setting, then fell behind due to both luck and skill, finally becoming just an international cog. The could have beens and never weres of this are shown in Richard Payne’s Stuck on the Drawing Board.

This is a fun, if niche, book for aviation enthusiasts. The big problem from the nature of the planes it describes. For passenger planes that are all essentially just tubes with different capacities, VTOLs and odd shapes are the absolute most different you’re going to get.

But this isn’t the book’s fault, and you’re left with a fun look at what could have happened before the 707 and its successors crushed any hope of a full-scale British aviation industry.