Graeme Donald

Loose Cannons (eBook, ePUB)

101 Myths, Mishaps and Misadventurers of Military History

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

A unique look at the military misconceptions that we take for granted, and a revelation of the truth behind the lies.

Who tried to bomb Japan with bats? Who invented the air-gun in 250BC? Which stories should we believe? The so-called Dambusters raid was all but ineffective; the Hurricane not the Spitfire was the champion of the Battle of Britain; Singapore did not fall because all the guns were pointing the wrong way' and who would go to war over a game of football, a pig, or an old bucket?

Oppenheimer fluffed his lines after the first atomic test; virtually every well-known quote attributed the Duke of Wellington is wrong; Churchill had a BBC voice impersonator record all his famous WW2 speeches as he was invariably too busy or too 'tired and emotional' to do it himself and no-one at the time called WW1 'The War to end all Wars'.

Will you believe the truth?

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury UK eBooks
• Seitenzahl: 320
• Erscheinungstermin: 1. Januar 2011
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781849086516
• Artikelnr.: 44628069

Autorenporträt

Graeme Donald has been researching the origins of words, nursery rhymes, superstitions and popular misconceptions for many years and has published nine previous books, most recently Fighting Talk and Sticklers, Sideburns and Bikinis for Osprey Publishing. He wrote a daily column for Today newspaper for the ten years of its publication and has also written for The Mirror and The Age in Melbourne.

Inhaltsangabe

- THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE DEADLY: little-known biographical detail of
some of the more 'flamboyant' characters to grace or disgrace a uniform -
MILITARY MISCONCEPTIONS: an overturning of some of the more established
'truths' bandied about the arena of military history - QUOTE-MISQUOTE:
military 'quotes' that never touched the lips of those to whom they are
attributed and an unscrambling of the mish-mash of half-truths and
misunderstanding of others - SAD WARS AND MAD WEAPONS: Some of the
ludicrous wars that have taken place through history, and the more lunatic
devices contrived to wreak death and destruction but which proved more of a
danger to the inventors.