[Book Reviews] "Spec Ops: Case Studies in Special Operations Warfare, Theory and Practice"
I have finished "Spec Ops: Case Studies in Special Operations Warfare, Theory and Practice", which I found fascinating despite the innate disturbingness of much of the subject matter. It wins on making history interesting -- there were several times where I cornered whomever I'd just been talking to to tell them all about whatever section I'd just read, and holy crap can you believe $foobarbaz even happened? So, I have it to thank for some interesting discussions with my friends. McRaven does an excellent job of trying to analyze the forces (pun half intended) at play during each of the eight missions he analyzes, and spent a ton of time on research, talking to all still-living sources to collect and cross-reference firsthand accounts of the engagements, and in many cases providing helpful maps to allow you to understand the situation better. It also does an excellent job of showing you that skill in operations planning and execution is not correllated with who has the moral high ground, and that can be difficult for some readers. For example, in both cases where the Nazis were the special forces, the Nazis did a brilliant job. They took the most heavily defended fortress on their border in 15 minutes. They stole Mussolini from captivity and brought him back to Hitler without firing a shot. But they're still the Nazis. Reading that kind of thing analytically can be hard, particularly if you have strong emotions about the sides.
One of the things I liked best about the book was its introductory description of the author's framework. Unlike many of the other military theory books I've read, this one seemed quickly comprehensible to the lay reader and sensibly attached to reality. (Disclaimer: I'm not in the military and I never have been, so it's entirely possible that I don't know what I'm talking about. This book review brought to you by an interested outsider.) McRaven defines a special operation in part as one where a relatively small force tries to achieve relative superiority to a larger and better equipped one, and lays out six elements on which the success of a special operation hinges. They are:
On to the "holy crap!" parts. [grin] It is worth noting that of the eight cases presented here, none of them were things that I'd ever learned about in school. That's a depressing commentary on American education. I had World War II in pretty much every American history class I ever took, and no one covered the German attack on Belgium's Eben Emael fortress which kicked off their invasion of Belgium and France. They took what was billed at the time as the most heavily defended fortress in the world by landing on the top in gliders (much quieter, to preserve surprise as long as possible) and then placing shaped charges (new at the time) to disable the heavily reinforced cupolas protecting the fort's guns. Then it was a matter of holding in place until the rest of the German military caught up. Nor did I know about the Nazi's extraction of Mussolini without firing a shot. (Bringing an Italian general along with them in order to confuse the Italians into not shooting long enough for them to secure the area was extraordinarily effective.) Nor did we cover Italy's frogman raid on Alexandria, Egypt, which the British were using as a harbor. That is just a ridiculous story. One Italian commando had the engine of his torpedo stop well short of the ship it was meant to destroy (HMS Valiant). He and his partner pushed the torpedo along until his partner's oxygen system failed and his partner had to surface. He pushed the torpedo alone... until *his* oxygen system failed and he had to surface. So that guy finished placing the torpedo under the hull of his target, alone, by dragging it, in between swimming to the surface to take breaths. Holy crap. Once the torpedo was in place, he was seen and arrested by the British... and taken for questioning onto the ship he knew was going to blow up in the near future. (Now that's a FML moment right there.) He told the British commander so. Unamused, they threw him into a solitary jail cell on the Valiant. When the torpedo blew up, he managed to lever the subsequent damage and force his way out of his jail cell, searching for and successfully finding his partner to ensure that neither of them went down with the ship. o.O
Some forces were more free with the lives of their commandos than others. In the section on the British raid on Saint-Nazaire, the only port on the Atlantic capable of repairing and refitting the Germans' massive battleship Tirpitz, the British had an innovative way to disable the dry dock (hit it with a large ship under full steam, have that ship full of explosives shaped to do maximum damage to the dock the day after the impact), they didn't have much in the way of an exit strategy. As I said to ilcylic after reading that part, you get the same sort of sinking feeling that you get in IT when talking about disaster planning and recovery. "This... is your plan? Guys, I don't think...." When your plan for getting their guys out is "and then we... get back into the tinfoil boats, long after the element of surprise is gone, and drive past alllll the German batteries"... yeah. Their backup plan was "try to blend in with the locals and walk to Spain", which works really well in your commando armor after you've just blown shit up... good plan, guys. [facepalm] So they didn't have surprise any more, and once the Germans recovered from the shock of the attack, they mopped up the Allied soldiers who were still there pretty quickly. Contrast 169 killed, 215 prisoners of war with the stats from other similar campaigns. It wasn't just this once, either. Britain went after the Tirpitz again at her home dock in Kåfjord, Norway with X-class midget submarines. They started out with six midget subs, but due to no full rehearsals of the plan before launching, only two actually made it to the Tirpitz, both in variably bad condition. The others had mechanical issues, broken towlines (one of the unmoored midgets was eventually rescued, one was never found), or abandoned their secondary mission so as to not compromise the attack on the Tirpitz. Of the two that made it, both were sunk immediately after the attack, with a few crewmen escaping and being captured but many just drowning. (Horribly, one of them was sunk by the equal and opposite force of its captain jumping off it to surrender. The force of his jump pushed it underwater, it swamped, and the crew ran out of oxygen waiting for the pressure to stabilize so they could escape. Only one other guy made it out.)
There were also more recent operations covered -- the Allied raid of Cabanatuan, where Americans and Filipinos rescued Allied prisoners of war from a Japanese internment camp. I'm kind of appalled that this was never covered in the Pacific theater parts of my history courses -- I had no idea that had even happened. (Then again, that part of my history class pretty much went "Pearl Harbor!" mumble mumble "Iwo Jima!". A lot got lost in the mumble.) There was also a section on the attempted POW rescue at Son Tay during the Vietnam war, Operation Kingpin. I found it much more difficult to follow the author when he was writing about American operations than when he was writing about any other country -- he explains less, and there are way more acronyms. You get sentences like this: "In addition to the above aircraft there were also a ten-aircraft MiG CAP provided by the 432nd Tactical Reconaissance wing at Udorn (F-4s), six F-105Gs (SAM and AAA suppression) provided by the 6010th Wild Weasel squadron at Korat RTAFB, two EC-121T College Eye early warning and command and control aircraft, two Combat Apple from Kadena Air Force base, Okinawa, one KC-135 radio relay aircract, ten KC-135 reserve tankers from U-TAPAO RTAFB, and a three-aircraft carrior diversionary strike forces which included seven A-6s, twenty A-7s, twelve F-4 and F-8 aircraft, six ECM/ES-1s, and fourteen support aircraft." Um. I realize that the target audience for this book (McRaven was essentially writing his thesis) is American military folks, and so they will know what all those things are, but if you don't it's a little rough and you're going to become good friends with Google.
The final covered operation was the Israeli Operation Entebbe to rescue the passengers of a hijacked Air France flight headed Tel Aviv -> Athens -> Paris. It was hijacked on the Athens -> Paris leg, and landed at Entebbe airport in Uganda. The IDF's response was different in flavor than many of the previously covered operations, because it was less clear than in any other discussed operation who were military combatants. Before the rescue, the IDF decided that the Ugandan locals at the airport were enemy combatants and treated them as such. They were extraordinarily effective, rescuing every hostage on site in a way no one had expected. They also killed a whole bunch of Ugandans as well as every hijacker on site. You get a lot of tactical momentum out of a decisive, uncompromising, kill everyone who might be an obstacle policy. Holy shit. I'm curious, though it's outside the scope of McRaven's book, whether Uganda was actually cooperating with the hijackers or whether Israel just thought they were. But blowing up all eight of the Ugandan MiGs with a machine gun on their way out as a final "fuck you, Uganda" on your way out... damn. As I put it to ilcylic, "They landed in your airport with our people. Don't let it happen again." Much like after reading Kate Beaton on Juarez and Maximilian, I kind of want to find a good book on Israeli military history now.
I welcome discussion on the above -- I thought it was really interesting. I have people from pretty much all the nations and cultures of those combatant groups on my friends list (except Uganda, I think), so please keep your comments mindful of that. Every "side" is listening, and people get really upset over characterizations of their group.
This entry was originally posted at http://ivy.dreamwidth.org/87374.html . Please feel free to comment on either site; comments rock.
One of the things I liked best about the book was its introductory description of the author's framework. Unlike many of the other military theory books I've read, this one seemed quickly comprehensible to the lay reader and sensibly attached to reality. (Disclaimer: I'm not in the military and I never have been, so it's entirely possible that I don't know what I'm talking about. This book review brought to you by an interested outsider.) McRaven defines a special operation in part as one where a relatively small force tries to achieve relative superiority to a larger and better equipped one, and lays out six elements on which the success of a special operation hinges. They are:
- simplicity
- security
- repetition
- surprise
- speed
- purpose
On to the "holy crap!" parts. [grin] It is worth noting that of the eight cases presented here, none of them were things that I'd ever learned about in school. That's a depressing commentary on American education. I had World War II in pretty much every American history class I ever took, and no one covered the German attack on Belgium's Eben Emael fortress which kicked off their invasion of Belgium and France. They took what was billed at the time as the most heavily defended fortress in the world by landing on the top in gliders (much quieter, to preserve surprise as long as possible) and then placing shaped charges (new at the time) to disable the heavily reinforced cupolas protecting the fort's guns. Then it was a matter of holding in place until the rest of the German military caught up. Nor did I know about the Nazi's extraction of Mussolini without firing a shot. (Bringing an Italian general along with them in order to confuse the Italians into not shooting long enough for them to secure the area was extraordinarily effective.) Nor did we cover Italy's frogman raid on Alexandria, Egypt, which the British were using as a harbor. That is just a ridiculous story. One Italian commando had the engine of his torpedo stop well short of the ship it was meant to destroy (HMS Valiant). He and his partner pushed the torpedo along until his partner's oxygen system failed and his partner had to surface. He pushed the torpedo alone... until *his* oxygen system failed and he had to surface. So that guy finished placing the torpedo under the hull of his target, alone, by dragging it, in between swimming to the surface to take breaths. Holy crap. Once the torpedo was in place, he was seen and arrested by the British... and taken for questioning onto the ship he knew was going to blow up in the near future. (Now that's a FML moment right there.) He told the British commander so. Unamused, they threw him into a solitary jail cell on the Valiant. When the torpedo blew up, he managed to lever the subsequent damage and force his way out of his jail cell, searching for and successfully finding his partner to ensure that neither of them went down with the ship. o.O
Some forces were more free with the lives of their commandos than others. In the section on the British raid on Saint-Nazaire, the only port on the Atlantic capable of repairing and refitting the Germans' massive battleship Tirpitz, the British had an innovative way to disable the dry dock (hit it with a large ship under full steam, have that ship full of explosives shaped to do maximum damage to the dock the day after the impact), they didn't have much in the way of an exit strategy. As I said to ilcylic after reading that part, you get the same sort of sinking feeling that you get in IT when talking about disaster planning and recovery. "This... is your plan? Guys, I don't think...." When your plan for getting their guys out is "and then we... get back into the tinfoil boats, long after the element of surprise is gone, and drive past alllll the German batteries"... yeah. Their backup plan was "try to blend in with the locals and walk to Spain", which works really well in your commando armor after you've just blown shit up... good plan, guys. [facepalm] So they didn't have surprise any more, and once the Germans recovered from the shock of the attack, they mopped up the Allied soldiers who were still there pretty quickly. Contrast 169 killed, 215 prisoners of war with the stats from other similar campaigns. It wasn't just this once, either. Britain went after the Tirpitz again at her home dock in Kåfjord, Norway with X-class midget submarines. They started out with six midget subs, but due to no full rehearsals of the plan before launching, only two actually made it to the Tirpitz, both in variably bad condition. The others had mechanical issues, broken towlines (one of the unmoored midgets was eventually rescued, one was never found), or abandoned their secondary mission so as to not compromise the attack on the Tirpitz. Of the two that made it, both were sunk immediately after the attack, with a few crewmen escaping and being captured but many just drowning. (Horribly, one of them was sunk by the equal and opposite force of its captain jumping off it to surrender. The force of his jump pushed it underwater, it swamped, and the crew ran out of oxygen waiting for the pressure to stabilize so they could escape. Only one other guy made it out.)
There were also more recent operations covered -- the Allied raid of Cabanatuan, where Americans and Filipinos rescued Allied prisoners of war from a Japanese internment camp. I'm kind of appalled that this was never covered in the Pacific theater parts of my history courses -- I had no idea that had even happened. (Then again, that part of my history class pretty much went "Pearl Harbor!" mumble mumble "Iwo Jima!". A lot got lost in the mumble.) There was also a section on the attempted POW rescue at Son Tay during the Vietnam war, Operation Kingpin. I found it much more difficult to follow the author when he was writing about American operations than when he was writing about any other country -- he explains less, and there are way more acronyms. You get sentences like this: "In addition to the above aircraft there were also a ten-aircraft MiG CAP provided by the 432nd Tactical Reconaissance wing at Udorn (F-4s), six F-105Gs (SAM and AAA suppression) provided by the 6010th Wild Weasel squadron at Korat RTAFB, two EC-121T College Eye early warning and command and control aircraft, two Combat Apple from Kadena Air Force base, Okinawa, one KC-135 radio relay aircract, ten KC-135 reserve tankers from U-TAPAO RTAFB, and a three-aircraft carrior diversionary strike forces which included seven A-6s, twenty A-7s, twelve F-4 and F-8 aircraft, six ECM/ES-1s, and fourteen support aircraft." Um. I realize that the target audience for this book (McRaven was essentially writing his thesis) is American military folks, and so they will know what all those things are, but if you don't it's a little rough and you're going to become good friends with Google.
The final covered operation was the Israeli Operation Entebbe to rescue the passengers of a hijacked Air France flight headed Tel Aviv -> Athens -> Paris. It was hijacked on the Athens -> Paris leg, and landed at Entebbe airport in Uganda. The IDF's response was different in flavor than many of the previously covered operations, because it was less clear than in any other discussed operation who were military combatants. Before the rescue, the IDF decided that the Ugandan locals at the airport were enemy combatants and treated them as such. They were extraordinarily effective, rescuing every hostage on site in a way no one had expected. They also killed a whole bunch of Ugandans as well as every hijacker on site. You get a lot of tactical momentum out of a decisive, uncompromising, kill everyone who might be an obstacle policy. Holy shit. I'm curious, though it's outside the scope of McRaven's book, whether Uganda was actually cooperating with the hijackers or whether Israel just thought they were. But blowing up all eight of the Ugandan MiGs with a machine gun on their way out as a final "fuck you, Uganda" on your way out... damn. As I put it to ilcylic, "They landed in your airport with our people. Don't let it happen again." Much like after reading Kate Beaton on Juarez and Maximilian, I kind of want to find a good book on Israeli military history now.
I welcome discussion on the above -- I thought it was really interesting. I have people from pretty much all the nations and cultures of those combatant groups on my friends list (except Uganda, I think), so please keep your comments mindful of that. Every "side" is listening, and people get really upset over characterizations of their group.
This entry was originally posted at http://ivy.dreamwidth.org/87374.html . Please feel free to comment on either site; comments rock.