My Mom, supportive as always, sent me an article that was discussing alternate history books. While I agree with the assessment that Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle is highly implausible, I take umbrage at the underlying thesis that entertaining alternate history cannot be historically accurate. I of course took even greater umbrage […]
James Uses His Essay Voice
Music Monday–Auschwitz and Sabaton
The Historian and His Metal Habit Greetings all. Welcome back to another edition of Music Monday. Wasn’t sure what I was going to do with this one. Then “Ye Olde Sentient Ipod” decided for me by randoming to Sabaton’s “Final Solution.” Why did this resonate? Well on 18 January, I went to the Auschwitz Exhibition […]
Warship Museum Hopping Prelude (Warship Wednesday)
That One Summer… Sorry it’s been a bit. Seems like just a blink of the eye I was talking about The Strategic Air Campaign and getting ready to go on a jaunt across the South to visit warship museums. Well the jaunt happened: These are all the museums I visited from 30 May – 7 […]
Pearl Harbor at 80 Years
For those of us of a certain age, it seems like “just yesterday” that we were passing Pearl Harbor’s 50th Anniversary. We had a World War II veteran as President, had seemingly just shook off our “Vietnam Syndrome” with a decisive victory that included the ship on which World War II ended, and several million […]
The Hammer Slams No More (David Drake Is Retiring)
There will be a longer post later. However, as many of you are fellow military sci-fi fans, I thought I’d share the news that David Drake is officially retiring. Mr. Drake has been talking about his declining health for several months, and I am unfortunately unsurprised. I can’t say for certain how long I’ve been reading […]
Your Sky Is Our Sky…: The Strategic Bombing Campaign Part VI
You ever get a little distracted working on other projects (i.e., 3 anthologies and a full novel) and neglect an earlier project? Until I looked at the dates, there was no way I thought it’d been a over a year since I last wrote on air combat (Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part […]
The Man Who Saved Western Civilization & Never Gets Credit For It–Fighter Combat Part III
When last we left this journey through aerial mayhem, France had just been knocked out of the war, the British Army was busy thanking every boat owner in Southern England while wringing out their clothes, and the Luftwaffe had just learned how to say “Acthung! Spitfire!” In the (wholly apocryphal) words of Hermann Goering, “Don’t […]
Blitzkrieg Bop –Fighter Combat Part II
“The Axis have won the toss and will kickoff.”—Aries, Head Referee, Great European Rematch, 1939-1945 Four things I’m going to assume with this blog post: 1.) You read the last blog post on aerial combat and liked it. 2.) Everyone involved possesses a general knowledge of World War II, is willing to go to the […]
"Everything Else Is Rubbish…"–Fighter Combat– Part I
“The fighter pilots have to rove in the area alotted to them in any way they like, and when they spot an enemy they attack and shoot him down, anything else is rubbish.”–Manfred von Richthofen, a.k.a. “The Red Baron” It’s hard to believe that aerial warfare has only been going on for a little over […]