Art
10-01-2013, 05:22
The title book is a work of historical fiction. It was written by our son-in-law's father, a former SeaBee who is now a naval historian. All of his previous works are non fiction mostly sponsored by the Navy Department.
The book is full of navy wonk stuff. This is especially true when it comes radio and crypto intelligence. Old Navy radiomen may be particularly interested. If you don't appreciate the work of Navy radiomen you will after reading the book.
The book is based on a fictitious attempt to kill Churchill during his meeting with Roosevelt at Newfoundland in August 1941. In the book the Nazis learn through telephone intercepts (they had in fact cracked the encoding on the transatlantic cable.) This was to be done, idealy, by a picket line of submarines with a shore party of SS Snipers as a back up. The book has a surprising ending to say the very least.
In writing the book Jack employed the following devices:
It is factually true that the Brits had largely defeated German encoding methods by mid 1941. That part is well known. Less well know was the fact that the Germans were decoding scrambled conversations via the transatlantic telephone cable. The planning of the meeting and the carrying out of the plan for the Roosevelt/Churchill meeting is factually reported, as are the names of all the allied ships and the major participants. It is also true that both German and Soviet agents were in fact operating in Canada and Newfoundland.
The operation to assassinate Churchill as I said, never happened. The names of all of the Germans tasked with actually carrying out the plot are fictitious, as are the numbers of all of the U-Boats, Jack took them from blocks of unassigned U-Boat numbers. The names of the Newfoundlanders and low ranking U.S. Naval personnel are also fictitious.
I enjoyed it even though I don't generally read fiction and the end is, as I said, a total shocker.
My copy of "Black Tuesday Over Namsi" by Earl J. McGill came in today. Just looking through it I think it will be a good read.
The book is full of navy wonk stuff. This is especially true when it comes radio and crypto intelligence. Old Navy radiomen may be particularly interested. If you don't appreciate the work of Navy radiomen you will after reading the book.
The book is based on a fictitious attempt to kill Churchill during his meeting with Roosevelt at Newfoundland in August 1941. In the book the Nazis learn through telephone intercepts (they had in fact cracked the encoding on the transatlantic cable.) This was to be done, idealy, by a picket line of submarines with a shore party of SS Snipers as a back up. The book has a surprising ending to say the very least.
In writing the book Jack employed the following devices:
It is factually true that the Brits had largely defeated German encoding methods by mid 1941. That part is well known. Less well know was the fact that the Germans were decoding scrambled conversations via the transatlantic telephone cable. The planning of the meeting and the carrying out of the plan for the Roosevelt/Churchill meeting is factually reported, as are the names of all the allied ships and the major participants. It is also true that both German and Soviet agents were in fact operating in Canada and Newfoundland.
The operation to assassinate Churchill as I said, never happened. The names of all of the Germans tasked with actually carrying out the plot are fictitious, as are the numbers of all of the U-Boats, Jack took them from blocks of unassigned U-Boat numbers. The names of the Newfoundlanders and low ranking U.S. Naval personnel are also fictitious.
I enjoyed it even though I don't generally read fiction and the end is, as I said, a total shocker.
My copy of "Black Tuesday Over Namsi" by Earl J. McGill came in today. Just looking through it I think it will be a good read.