Featured battle : Repulse at Charleston

Part of American Civil War

Date : 07 April 1863

Union Rear Admiral du Pont with an ironclad frigate and 8 monitors attempted to attack Charleston harbour but their slow-moving craft with heavier caliber but shorter range guns in rotating turrets were of no real threat to the bastions of Forts Sumter and Moultrie which poured plunging fire onto the ironclads for 2 hours before du Pont ordered a withdrawal. They were badly battered by the forts and the Keokuk sank that night. The forts had been barely scratched. This was not to be du Pont's 'New Orleans'

Operation Colossus. The First Airborne Raid of WW II

Lawrence Paterson
Lawrence Paterson’s book is an incredible story beautifully told. As fiction it would be barely believable but the thoroughly researched facts are from official reports and first hand accounts. This book is about so much more than operation Colossus because it necessarily has to include the beginnings of military parachuting. Anyone familiar with modern military parachuting will be amazed by the early efforts in exiting from unsuitable aircraft. In a sense Colossus was an operation both to try out and test this new weapon in Britain’s armoury. From the missions successes and failures many useful lessons were learnt but to say more would be to give the game away and this book should be read as a novel which shouldn’t be spoilt by knowing the end before reading it. Supporting the text is a very good set of photographs.
To those who want to be better informed and to anyone who wants a good read we highly recommend this book.

Greenhill Books, 2020