The Mammoth Book of Covert Ops

by Jon E. Lewis (Editor)

Real-life accounts of covert military operations, from raids into Laos to US Navy SEAL operations are under scrutiny in this anthology. Lewis shines a revealing light on the units that conduct clandestine operations and tells of the greatest missions of the last 50 years.

512 pages, Paperback

First published August 13, 2013

About the author

Jon E. Lewis is a historian and writer, whose books on history and military history are sold worldwide. He is also editor of many The Mammoth Book of anthologies, including the bestselling On the Edge and Endurance and Adventure.

He holds graduate and postgraduate degrees in history. His work has appeared in New Statesman, the Independent, Time Out and the Guardian. He lives in Herefordshire with his partner and children.

From: Constable & Robinson

Reviews

[Arun Divakar · Rating 2 out of 5]

The series ‘Mammoth Book Of..’ is one that I have taken a fancy to. Apart from a far flung arena of topics, the books are extremely short summations of broad topics. They are all not necessarily well written and some of the topics and books tend to lean towards the mediocre but overall it is a good effort at creating a series of primers. This book has a collection of tablet shaped summaries of some of the most famous commando operations that have been carried out across the world.

Mainstream Hollywood movies had made me believe that military operations always work like clockwork with a precision that can only be termed as surgical. The realization that each operation depends on the daring, valor and on-the-fly decisions by the operators was a rude jolt for me as a youngster. With time, I have come to fully appreciate the daring that defines special forces across the World. The collection in this book ranges from some of the spectacular successes by spec ops teams which include :

•Entebbe Airport Raid - Sayeret Matkal (Israel)

•Iranian Embassy Siege – 22 SAS (UK)

•Operation Neptune Spear : The take down of Bin Laden – Navy SEAL’s (US)

•Munich Massacre Aftermath : Operation Wrath Of God – Mossad/Sayeret Matkal (Israel)

•Lufthansa Flight 181 : Operation Fire Magic - GSG9 (Germany)

And then again there are some of the totally botched up operations like :

•Black Hawk Down : US Special Forces/Task Force Ranger

•Bay Of Pigs : CIA

•Iran Hostage Crisis : Operation Eagle Claw – US Special Forces

•Bravo Two Zero – 22 SAS (UK)

The book could have been a lot more smaller if not for a clever tactic adopted by the publishers. The description of the operations themselves are not more than five pages per scenario. Rather cleverly, the publishers and author has inserted a series of official/de-classified documents for each of the missions which are mostly governmental reports. This does not add much of value to the reader other than bogging him/her down with a lot bureaucratic jargon and needlessly putting them off to sleep. Secondly, the book focusses almost exclusively on the US/UK spec ops teams. The author waxes eloquent about the 22 SAS and there are multiple chapters that chronicle its rise to later prominence. While this is a good topic, some of the other major commando teams across the world are forgotten. Notably absent are :

•Russia : There is zero mention of Spetsnaz (the Russian Spec Ops team) in the book. Considering the scale of operation and lessons learned, one cannot miss out on the Moscow theatre hostage crisis.

•India : The NSG operations at the Akshardham temple (Operation Aswamedh) & 26/11 – The siege of the Taj hotel.

•France : GIGN and the raid on Air France 8969.

•Sri Lanka : The prolonged operations against the separatist LTTE.

While it does contain some interesting vignettes about the missions and the teams involved, this is by no means a mammoth book. If you are new to the whole aspect of spec ops and what they go through, then this is a book to start with but otherwise this is at best avoidable.

[Boštjan · Rating 2 out of 5]

It may be very interesting for someone who's niche-interested in exquisite details of specific combat operations, but to an average reader the book is a bit too detailed without the focus on the broader picture of a specific covert operation, e.g. much space is devoted to personal accounts of battle rather than giving a wider understanding of the operation.
Also, unfathomable, there are tens of pages in each chapter filled with hardly relevant documents (justification of someone receiving a purple heart while it was already heavily explained and overly described in the chapter at the expense of the bigger picture) or descriptionbs of additional covert ops from WW2 which have nothing to do with the covert operation mentioned in the chapter.
Like I said, I would suggest this book to a rabid military aficionado only.