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    Council Member CrowBat's Avatar
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    Default Few 'Small Wars' - in Africa

    Hope, nobody is going to mind me drawing your attention at the following titles, all of which are related to 'Small Wars'.

    Since few years, Helion Publishing (UK) is running a book series titled Africa@War. Dedicated to in-depth coverage of post-WWII African military conflicts, campaigns, battles, or 'just' certain military services, this series has so far resulted in release of about 20 volumes. Each is 96 pages in DIN A4 format, and richly illustrated (lately in full colour).

    Between titles released about two weeks back are two by your very own:

    - Wings over Ogaden, which is a very detailed (and richly illustrated) history of coming-into-being of Ethiopian and Somali air forces, of their equipment and training, and their air warfare during Ogaden War, fought in 1977-1978.

    Of particular interest during the work on this project was a series of interviews with participants from both sides. While Somalis were nowhere near as 'talkative' as Ethipians (who helped even with some of their official documentation), what they all provided is a unique insight into differences in training methods provided by the USA and the USSR to 'Third World' allies at the heigth of the Cold War.

    Results of that training came out as a quite unpleasant surprise for the Soviets, and might still surprise quite a few - even more so because it was 'common knowledge' since decades that Northrop F-5E Tiger II and MiG-21 'never met in combat'.

    Well, they did, and the outcome of their battles was decisive for the outcome of this war too.

    - http://www.amazon.com/Libyan-Air-War...r Wars, Part 1 is the first in a mini-series (three volumes are in making) covering aerial conflicts over Libya, but also several neighbours (foremost Chad, of course).

    Part 1 is therefore somewhat of an 'introduction'. It's centred around a reconstruction of the build-up of the Libyan Arab Air Force during the 1970s, their lessons learned from the short war with Egypt (1977) and the first series of US-Libyan clashes, in 1981-1983 period. Subsequently, this conflict was 'transferred' to Chad, where Libyans found themselves confronted by the French in 1981-1985 period.

    Once again, particularly interesting experience from working on this project was meeting and 'chatting' with some of participants. It never stops amazing me what kind of surprises are most of them able to provide - and how 'things' start making sense once they do so.

    For those with interest in even more recent, 'post-Cold War' African conflicts, of particular interest might be two earlier of my titles published in this series:

    Great Lakes Holocaust: Fist Congo War, 1996-1997

    Great Lakes Conflagration: Second Congo War, 1998-2003

    These are two chronologies and studies of military aspects of the Congolese Wars fought between up to a dozen of different African nations in the DR Congo, with some 'heavy leaning' on the use of air power too.

    But that all said, my drive when working on projects of this kind is always to find out what were the motives and reasons for conflicts, what were all involved parties intending to do, what were they capable of doing, what did they use, what were their experiences, and why. I'm always striving to get approach to 1st hand sources too. Although 'oral history' approach to subjects of this kind is never yielding '100% perfect' results, it does offer original insights of participants. Foremost, it's explaining how 'they' saw their situation, reasons and experiences. Thus, there is plenty of 'lessons learned' in all of these volumes, always obtained from 1st-hand sources.

    In that sense, Adrian Fontanellaz and me are also working on something like a 'prequel' to the story of Congolese Wars, namely the title Rwandan Patriotic Front, which is to cover military aspects of the Rwandan Civil War of 1990-1994, and then the emergence of the Rwandan Patriotic Front in particular...
    Last edited by CrowBat; 03-13-2015 at 10:41 PM.

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