Urban Warfare on the Eastern Front    by Anthony Tucker-Jones Pen and Sword, Barnsley, 2023 Hardcover ISBN 978 1 39907 200 7 Reviewed by:  Charles Knight   Anthony Tucker-Jones’s Battle of the Cities : Urban Warfare on the Eastern Front provides a thorough overview of operational-level urban warfare on the Eastern Front, structured around 20 significant urban engagements. It presents as being dense and well researched, and for each battle it provides not only context and conduct, but great detail about …

The Guadalcanal-Solomons Campaign, March– October 1943   by Jeffrey R Cox  Osprey Publishing, 2023, 528 pp. Hardback ISBN 9781472849892 EBook PDF ISBN 9781472849854 EPub & Mobi ISBN 9781472849885 Reviewed by:  Felicity Petrie Dark Waters, Starry Skies is the fourth in a series of books by lawyer and historian Jeffrey R Cox that follows the Second World War Pacific campaign. This volume specifically covers the Guadalcanal campaign over the period March to October 1943, when the Allies began to turn the tide …

A Struggle to Prevail    by David H Ucko Hurst & Collins, 2022, 464 pp. ISBN 9781787385658 Reviewed by:  Travis Peet   The overwhelming narrative to emerge from the 20-year ‘War on Terror’ is the impotence of the counterinsurgent. The vision of desperate Afghans fleeing Kabul in 2021 seemed to confirm the inability of governments to translate great military power into victory, and the perception of the success of insurgents was further reinforced by never-ending cycles of violence in the Middle East. …

American Firepower and Amphibious Assault from Tarawa to Iwo Jima   by Chris K Hemler Naval Institute Press, 2023, 229 pp. ISBN 9781682471340 REVIEWED BY:  John Nash   Many books on World War II in the Pacific focus on either land, air or naval forces, especially when examining the battles of the US Marine Corps (USMC). Chris K Hemler’s book Delivering Destruction explores four key campaigns of the Pacific War through the lens of ‘triphibious’ warfare: the land, air and sea components of these campaigns. …

The Pacific War, 1937-1945   by John T Kuehn Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 2023, 220 pp. ISBN 9781682477656 Reviewed by:  Dayton McCarthy   The 19th century German polymath Rudolf Virchow wrote that ‘brevity in writing is the best insurance for its perusal’. If this aphorism is correct—and I suspect that most military officers would support such a belief—then John T Kuehn’s Strategy in Crisis has done its best to ensure it has wide appeal among its prospective readership. Although not explicitly …

Mobilisation and Australia’s National Resilience …

This article comprises a reflective piece on the re-raising of 7RAR in 2006-07. BRIG Shane Gabriel was the battalion’s first CO following its re-raising, and subsequently led elements of it into Afghanistan in 2008-09 as CO of Mentoring and Reconstruction Task Force – One. While the Australian Army Journal is and will remain a scholarly, peer reviewed publication, throughout its long history it has been pleased to publish such reminiscences on significant moments in Army’s history. In light of Army’s …

Space Assets, Space Data, and Space Workforce on the Ground … Mobilising Space for Army …

Overseas Plan 401 and the Interwar Australian Military Forces (1919–1939) One thing alone is of import: the point of preparation reached at the actual outbreak of war.—Ferdinand Foch [1] … Expeditionary Force Mobilisation Planning in an Age of Austerity …

Australian Beach Groups, 1943-1945 The process of getting men and vehicles ashore during an assault landing and maintaining them at their full fighting efficiency is complicated by the very nature of the operation … it is no exaggeration to say that once a beach head has been secured, the success of the operation will depend very largely on the early establishment and smooth running of an efficient beach organisation. [i] Introduction and Context By 1943, the American and Australian forces had gained the …