Hot Blood & Cold Steel

Category: History

  • Book Review – Bullets and Brains by Leo Murray

    Brains and Bullets: How Psychology Wins Wars by Leo Murray My rating: 5 of 5 stars Brains and Bullets is an excellent and very readable book which tries to put some hard numbers on a variety of psychological tactics that can be used to persuade your own troops to fight and the enemy to give up.…

  • Book Review – Spies Under Berlin by David Stafford

    Spies Beneath Berlin by David Stafford My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is a very well put together story of the Berlin spy tunnel, and some of the context that lead up to it being dug. It looks at the contemporary views and also re-evaluates the impact of the tunnel and whether or not…

  • Commentary – Hunting Nazis

    I’ve written a short story called Hunting Nazis for the End of Module Assessment (EMA) for A215 Creative Writing. The target word count was 2,500 with an upper limit of +10%. The first draft weighed in at 5k words, double the target length. However some of this was because although I plotted it I needed to…

  • Book Review – Flames in the Field by Rita Kramer

    Flames in the Field: Story of Four SOE Agents in Occupied France by Rita Kramer My rating: 3 of 5 stars While this has lots of fascinating information about SOE Operations in France in WW2 it needs a better editor. The nature of the story, primarily of the secret operations in German occupied France in…

  • Game Design Notes: World War One Strategic Battles

    This was originally written as a game design session prompt for a session at Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group back in April 2004. A discussion thread on about this excellent blog post http://sketchinggamedesigns.blogspot.com.es/2014/01/the-wrinkles-of-tactics-first-world-war.html lead me to dig it out and post it here. World War One Strategic Battles Turn structure Three turns per year, March – June…

  • The Stress of Battle – Pt5 Operational Research on WW2 Heroism

    The Stress of Battle – Pt5 Operational Research on WW2 Heroism

    This is the fifth and final part of my extended review of The Stress of Battle by David Rowland. It is such a strong piece of operational research on WW2 heroism that I thought that it would be useful for wargame designers (and players) to understand what the research evidence is for what went on in WW2 battles. This…

  • The Stress of Battle – Part 4 – Op Research on Anti-Tank Combat

    This is the fourth part of my review of The stress of battle: quantifying human performance in combat by David Rowland, which is an essential piece of Operational Research on WW2 and Cold War combat operations. This part covers the findings on anti-tank combat. Anti-Tank Combat Unlike small arms, the effectiveness of weapons used for anti-tank combat has changed considerably over the course of the…

  • The Stress of Battle – Part 3 – Op Research on Terrain Effects

    This is the third part of my extended review of The Stress of Battle by David Rowland. It is such a strong piece of operational research that I thought that it would be useful for wargame designers (and players) to understand what the research evidence is for what went on in WW2 battles. Fighting in…

  • Stress of Battle – Part 2 – Op Research on Urban Battles

    This is the second part of my review of The stress of battle: quantifying human performance in combat by David Rowland, which is an essential piece of Operational Research on WW2 and Cold War combat operations. For this part I thought that I would focus on the lessons on urban battles. Rowland and his team used…

  • Book Review – The Stress of Battle by David Rowland (Part 1)

    Not exactly a book review, more of a synopsis of a great work of Operational Research by David Rowland. The Stress of Battle: Quantifying Human Performance in Combat is the end result of years of work by David Rowland and his team at the Ministry of Defence. Rowland was the father of historical analysis as…

  • Book Review: Watching War Films With My Dad by Al Murray

    Watching War Films with My Dad by Al Murray My rating: 4 of 5 stars I really enjoyed reading Watching War Films With My Dad. The book plays off his fascination with military history, and that for him it stems from growing up in the 70s and 80s playing with Action Man and building Airfix…

  • Games on COIN

    This post is prompted by an excellent post by the guys at On Violence. You should read Capturing Australia! COIN is Boring Pt.3 to which this was my belated comment. My apologies for coming late to this one, I’ve been on leave for a couple of weeks now and being spending time with the family. I’ve…