Operation Biting by Max Hastings reminds me a lot of Bastard Brigade by Sam Kean in that I can't believe the plot in the book actually worked.

Operation Biting covers the 1942 Allied plan to steal Germany's radar. Readers of this book will appreciate that Hastings doesn't spend a tremendous amount of time explaining the big picture of the war, but drops the reader right into the action relevant to this story.

Great story, great pacing, yet another excellent volume from Max Hastings, who is quickly becoming one of my favorite history writers.

An interesting look at a little-known raid performed by the British in WW2. Although the planning and intelligence into the raid was slipshod and inaccurate, the outcome was a success for the raiders. The leadership was faulty, and things could have gone badly, but the men overcame and succeeded. This success may have led to later failures on a grander scale by the British (Dieppe and the St Nazarene Dock). Overall, I enjoyed the story and the firsthand accounts which really brought the story to life.

Thank you to #NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher Harper for an advance copy of this history about one of the first successful parachute raids carried out out in occupied territory, a raid for technology, that gave many lessons to forces on both sides of the war.

When I was a child I remember reading a book in school about a young English lad who was trapped in France after the occupation by German forces. The book was aimed at children, but was a thrilling story about life under occupation, the Germans, the people who resisted in big and small ways. And a plot about a British raid on a radar station, that somehow the boy aids in. I loved this book, checking it out of the library numerous times, but being in middle school, had no real idea the book was based on real events, real events I knew little about until now. Operation Biting: The 1942 Parachute Assault to Capture Hitler's Radar is written by author, historian and journalist Max Hastings and covers a dark time in the early part of the war, a time of darkness, and a fear that somehow the enemy had a way of seeing through this darkness, maybe straight to victory.

By the start of 1942 the Royal Airforce, High Command and the various intelligence forces were beginning to admit to something they did not want to face. That the enemy might have a radar network, which would be problematic, and a radar network that might be better than the one used by the British, which would be catastrophic. Grudgingly those in power began to listen to the scientists who had been warning them, and began to try to place where the radar might be. More scientists, and intelligence agents were brought in, and as work progressed, so did an idea that seemed rash, and even harder to sell, but one that could work. Using paratroopers to land in Occupied France, take control of the radar site, and steal it, evacuating by sea. The planning would have to be meticulous, as would gathering intelligence on the ground, finding the right planes, the right men, even the right weather.

I first read Max Hastings when I started in my first bookstore and came across his The Battle for the Falkland Islands. Since then I have read many of his works, and while I enjoyed them, more importantly I learned quite a bit. Hastings not only has a good grasp of the history of the time and how to write about the military, Hastings is able to make complicated ideas, Radar, radio communications, ballistics, and such easy to understand, and work within his story. This is a book that reads in many places life fiction, thought of course life is stranger than fiction. The men who broke jaws jumping through untested planes. The spy who enjoyed the good life in Paris, the rivalries between services. Hastings uses these stories not only to tell his story, but to remind readers that these people are real, they existed, and sometimes people are complicated. Heroes might not be heroes all the time. There is a lot here, spy stories, science, action, political maneuvers. Hastings never loses the narrative, nor lets the book drag.

A very well-written history on an event I knew from a middle school adventure book I read. Hastings is very good at this, and if one likes military or books about World War II, I can't recommend this enough. The mix of personal tales, real history, technology, make for very good reading.

Fun fact: No one actually gets bit in Operation Biting by Max Hastings. Some Nazis do get a measure of comeuppance, though which is nice.

Operation Biting is about a 1942 British commando raid to steal a radar from the Germans in occupied France. The Allies really wanted to know what the Nazis had going as far as their radar was concerned, and this raid was audacious. I don't use "audacious" a lot because I need to really mean it. Operation Biting fits the bill. Commandos landed in the middle of the night, charged into a German base, stole technology, and then had to rendezvous with the navy before being killed. As someone who has jumped out of military planes before, I can assure you this was a bonkers plan.

Hastings tells the story succinctly. This is not a World War II book which explains every aspect of how England got to this mission. There are a lot of characters, but Hastings dispenses with any detail not needed to understand the story. This is a double edged sword. I really appreciated the stripped down narrative, but I also found myself wanting to spend a little more time with some characters. This is a nitpick, though. Any World War II nerd will want this book on their shelves.

(This book was provided as an advance copy by Netgalley and Harper Books.)