Page 60 - Australian Defence Magazine July-August 2021

60 BOOKS OF INTEREST
JULY-AUGUST 2021 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
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AIRCRAFT OF THE ROYAL AUSTRALIAN AIR FORCE By various authors
Published by Big Sky Publishing RRP $59.99 in hardcover
ISBN 9781922488039
Published for the Royal Australian Air Force as part
of its centenary celebrations, this book, at 640 pages and weighing 2.75 kg, is in all respects a hefty tome. As the title suggests, it is a reference work intended to present a brief record of every aircraft type
to have seen service with the RAAF since its inception in 1921
ELEVEN BATS
A STORY OF COMBAT, CRICKET AND THE SAS
By Anthony ‘Harry’ Moffitt Published by Allen & Unwin RRP $34.99 in paperback ISBN 9781760877842
Author Anthony ‘Harry’ Moffitt retired from the ADF after almost thirty years, most
of which were spent in the SAS. He completed eleven active deployments, which
is how the book title ‘Eleven Bats’ emerged. Along with the SAS, Harry’s other great love is cricket and he found
and, as such, it is not a book to be read from cover to cover in a single sitting. Beginning with a foreword by current CAF, Air Marshal Mel Hupfeld, the book, firstly, explains the RAAF’s unique ‘A number’ identifier system, covering each aircraft type, now in its third series. The type histories begin with the first aircraft in Series 1, the De Havilland DH-9A (A1) in the early 1920s and progresses through time to the soon to be received MQ-4C Triton (A47), currently the most recent in
the third series (A47) and the out-of-sequence F-4E Phantom (A69). Each entry provides
a brief history of the type in service and is supported by basic aircraft performance tables and a number of photographs. Recommended for anyone with a serious interest
in Australian military aviation. - Nigel Pittaway
that an improvised game of cricket was often the circuit- breaker his team needed to release the tension surrounding their operations. As part of
the cricket tradition, Harry
took a cricket bat with him
on operational tours, eleven
of them in total. From the mountains of East Timor with
a fugitive rebel leader, or on
the dusty streets of Baghdad, or in exposed Forward Operating Bases in the hills of Afghanistan, these spontaneous games became an important way to break down barriers. It is these eleven bats that form the basis for Harry’s extraordinary memoir. It’s a book about combat, and what it takes to serve and the toll that war
takes on soldiers. It is also a book about the healing power
of cricket. A well-written and highly readable account of what it means to be part of Australia’s elite regiment, the SAS.
THE BLIND STRATEGIST
JOHN BOYD AND THE AMERICAN ART OF WAR
By Stephen Robinson
Published by Exisle Publishing RRP $49.99 in hardback
ISBN 9781925820348
Author Stephen Robinson has, with this latest book, made a bold assault on the foundations of nearly fifty years of military thinking developed by maverick US fighter pilot Colonel John Boyd, who died in 1997, but whose influence in military doctrine lives on. Boyd’s theories of manoeuvre warfare
PATHFINDER, ‘KRIEGIE” AND GUMBOOT GOVERNOR THE ADVENTUROUS LIFE OF SIR JAMES ROWLAND AC, KBE, DFC, AFC By Peter Yule and Sir James Rowland Published by Big Sky Publishing
RRP $34.99 in paperback
ISBN: 9781922387400
It is thanks to James Rowland’s daughter that this memoir has seen the light of day. Rowland wrote the majority of it following his lung cancer diagnosis –
he died in 1999. Peter Yule, fortunately, has been able to give us a highly readable account of an extraordinary
were accepted widely among Western allies yet Robinson offers up convincing evidence that the accounts from defeated German officers on which
Boyd relied were ‘dishonest fabrications’ later exposed as such by professional historians. Yet, as Robinson writes, as recently as the First Gulf
War, there were boasts of the success of manoeuvre warfare while ‘theorists mostly knew this was not true’. In fact, he claims that while the American military continue to perceive itself as
a manoeuvre warfare force,
it does not in reality practice it. This book has been widely commended and described, variously, as ‘fascinating’,
with ‘much to be learned from reading it’ and a ‘must read for all serious students of modern warfare’. Without doubt, I believe this timely book will,
if nothing else, encourage vigorous debate.
man’s life. Aged just 22, Rowland became a Lancaster pilot in the elite Pathfinder
force via the Empire Air Training Scheme. He was awarded
the DFC. Later he was taken prisoner following a collision with a Canadian aircraft over Germany. And so began his decades-long association
with military aviation. Back in Australia he joined the RAAF, rising to become Chief of the Air Staff in 1975 via a career
as a test pilot. On retirement
he was appointed Governor of NSW and later sat on a number of boards, including chairing
the Aerospace Foundation, set up to run the Avalon Air Show. He was universally respected and admired. Who knew he was a cousin of Australia’s great literary icon Judith Wright? This and other little-known facts emerge in this book that many readers, especially those who worked alongside Jim Rowland, will find fascinating.