British Army communications in the Second World War
Subtitle: lifting the fog of battle
By: Simon Godfrey
Series: Birmingham war studies series; Birmingham war studies series
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: 2013
Place of publication: London; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 290
ISBN-13: 9781441190390; 9781441108920; 9781441181435
Subjects: World War, 1939-1945; Communications; Communication systems; History; Military Communications; Great Britain. Army; Great Britain
Description: Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence form the backbone of the Army's operating system. But while much attention has been given in the literature to the other three elements, Communications in the British Army during World War II have been widely ignored. This book rectifies the omission. It shows that failures in front line communications contributed to several of the set backs suffered by the Army but also that ultimate victory was only achieved after a successful communications system was in place. It explains how the outcome of the main campaigns in Europe and North Africa depended on communications, how the system operated and how it evolved from a relatively primitive and inadequately supplied state at Dunkirk to a generally effective system at the time of the Rhine crossings. Problems still occurred however, for example at infantry platoon level and famously with paratrooper communications at Arnhem, often simply due to the shortcomings of existing technology. The book concludes that it is only very recently that advances in technology have allowed those problems to be solved -- Publishers website.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [263]-285) and index.
Table of contents: title: 1. Introduction; title: 2. The pre-war period; title: 3. The phoney war and Dunkirk 1939-40; title: 4. 1940-43: home forces: the Army in the UK; title: 5. The Western desert 1939-42; title: 6. Operation TORCH and Tunisia 1942-43; title: 7. Sicily and Italy, 1943-44; title: 8. North-West Europe, 1944-45; title: 9. Conclusions; title: Appendix I: British wireless sets.