A reminder that the latest Casemate catalogue can be downloaded as a pdf file from the
Casemate web site. Casemate are distributors for a range of publishers producing exciting works that will be of interest to readers of this blog; Heimdal, Kagero, Stackpole, Histoire et Collections, Bernard and Graefe to cite just a few. See Casemate's publisher list
here.
Latest from
Stackpole is James Mrazek's "Airborne combat " (below) a history of fighting gliders in WWII. Mrazek has previously written about the German 'prise de main' of the key Belgian fort at Eben Emael during May 1940 and in this inexpensive 500-page softback, Mrazek presents details of all WWII combat gliders through accounts of all the significant operations of the war including Crete, Sicily, Normandy, Arnhem and 'Varsity', the crossing of the Rhine. Eben Emael proved that the glider could be used with devasting tactical surprise. Once again though this was a field in which the Germans were some considerable way ahead of the Americans. By 1942 German glider effort had reached a pinnacle of technical achievement that even the US with its huge technical resources could not attain. The US neither produced a glider anywhere as large as the Me 321 Gigant nor attained the excellence in innovation and design reached by the Germans. Mrazek's accounts of elite glider troops in action are nicely illustrated with rare images and first-hand accounts and include chapters on Soviet and Japanese gliders.
