Rick Brindle's Blog
November 24, 2022
We Are Cold Steel, free to download
We Are Cold Steel, the second installment in the Cold Steel triolgy, is free to download from Amazon for a limited time. Get your free copy now.
We Are Cold Steel
We Are Cold Steel
May 12, 2022
Review of Pathfinders
The Pathfinders: The Greatest Untold Story of the Air War against the Nazis by Will IredaleMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is the second Will Iredale book I've read, the other one being the Kamikaze Hunters. On balance, I liked the other one better.
So, this book deals with the Pathfinder Force, a unit within Bomber Command that marked targets for the rest on the bombers to attack. In a time when there wasn't satellite navigation, at the start of the war it was pretty much dead reckoning. The book tells us how the RAF was able to develop its own methods for target marking, based on initial German successes during the Blitz and earlier.
Iredale also highlights the interesting personal interplay between Don Bennett, head of the Pathfinders, Ralph Cochrane, head of a rival RAF group, and Bomber Harris, who seemed to play them off against each other.
But where the book loses momentum is in the early biographies of the Pathfinders. For me, they were too long, too involved, and frankly, involved too many people. I couldn't keep track of them all in my mind, and it took some of the pace from the story, a bit like the Game of Thrones books when the action suddenly grinds to a halt to mention yet another family and their history. Overall, not a game changer, but it takes a star away, at least in my eye.
That aside, a good read, and an interesting piece of history.
View all my reviews
April 10, 2022
New book
My latest book, It's Not For Everyone, a memoir about my time in the RAF Regiment, is now available on Amazon
It's Not For Everyone
It's Not For Everyone
