Read it in books

[hirez]

(I'm not counting the damn things because I'll end up looking like some thicky)

Even so:

'Death traps' by Belton Y. Cooper is an engineering-BOfH's-eye-view of US tank warfare from D-Day to Berlin. It boils down to 'The hardware's (specifically the M4 Sherman) shite. An aircraft engine in a tank? What cowboys put that in? I'll all have to come out.' Though that leaves out the grimly spot-on descriptions of the thing's failure-modes when shot at by the other side. Fine stuff.

'The Box' by Marc Levinson. A history of the shipping container. Yes, really.

Comments

[jendama.livejournal.com]

Our employer has added to the history of the shipping container. We have found a way to use one (http://www.selinc.com/flyers/PowerCORE_Flyer.pdf) to make an affordable drop-in substation control house that also includes all the equipment we manufacture. They're kinda cool.

[quercus.livejournal.com]

The Belton Cooper book is absolutely riddled with errors and gross embroidery though.

If you ever find one (you won't, they're rare as tramps' teeth) then the mid-90s HMSO-published series on tank history are an excellent read (try "The Universal Tank"). Sadly (and obviously) UK-centric, but it explains how the UK came to be so good at tank design, then so bad, then finally good at it again. It all gets a bit R101 at times -- plucky private enterprise gets it right, Minitankfarben screws it up.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Errors of a technical or event-ordering nature?

The embroidery keeps it readable, although even then it sometimes clunks along and could really have done with a sound Editing. It's still a memoir and as such features an Unreliable Narrator.