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This is a question Books

We love books. Tell us about your favourite books and authors, and why they are so good. And while you're at it - having dined out for years on the time I threw Dan Brown out of a train window - tell us who to avoid.

(, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 13:40)
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The best true war story ever
Vulcan 607 by Rowland White

Tells the very British tale of how Vulcan bombers on their way to a scrap merchant were put back together using string and sticky backed plastic so that they could be flown half way around the world using an untested and inadvisable system of refuelling via relay (described by one of the crew as 'like trying to insert wet spaghetti up a cat's arse' ) to run a one chance only bombing run to destroy the runway in Stanley so that Argentina couldn't land jets on the Falklands. Absolutely thrilling from cover to cover.
(, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 22:36, 7 replies)
In that case:
There's a couple of other Falklands-based books that may interest you.

Four Weeks in May - the war as experienced by the Captain of HMS Coventry.
Sea Harrier over the Falklands - an alternative viewpoint on the aerial war as told by Sea Harrier pilot (and 801 NAS Squadron Leader).
(, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 23:25, closed)
i totally loved that book.
the relay refueling was quite a feat.
(, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 23:52, closed)
I worked for a guy who had been Vulcan aircrew back in those days...
...mad as three badgers and a fine example of the (sadly now very rare) old school Officer. Guys who bumble around in growbags, call everyone by their first name regardless of rank, drink more than they should and somehow always get the job done.
(, Fri 6 Jan 2012, 0:09, closed)
Awesome, awesome book.
We'd be fucked now if they tried it again, though.
(, Fri 6 Jan 2012, 1:41, closed)
We might as well hand the Falklands over now.
We probably wouldn't even get as far as Eastleigh!
(, Fri 6 Jan 2012, 13:53, closed)
You'll like "Phoenix Squadron" by the same author
Somehow he made a long forgotten mission to sail a near-knackered aircraft carrier to the coast of Honduras to send a couple of jets to fly over Belize once into a rivetting yarn.

Military history usually bores the pants off me, but this was the exception. My only regret is that Jeremy Clarkson probably likes it too and thus I have something else in common with him beyond having curly hair.
(, Fri 6 Jan 2012, 16:02, closed)
I concur although I don't think it is quite as good
But then 607 set the bar pretty high and I had absolutely no idea of our involvement in Central America so it was more educational.
(, Sat 7 Jan 2012, 12:51, closed)

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