Tom Cooper has collaborated on a large number of books about the militaries of the Middle East. This time he worked with Sirous Ebrahimi and E.R. Hooton to produce Iran-Iraq Naval War, Volume 2: Convoy Battles, 1981-1984. The book provides a wealth of detail for a part of the conflict which is barely covered but that might be for a good reason.
Iran relied upon naval convoys to supply its troops and its population. This proved crucial because Tehran quickly gained the initiative in the war and went on the offensive to recapture its lost territory and eventually enter Iraq. Baghdad tried to interdict these convoys with little success. As the authors point out during the start of the war Iraq had very little impact because Saddam Hussein was far more interested in the land campaign. That is probably the main reason this hasn’t been covered much before.
Most of the book is about each individual Iranian convoy, the air, naval and intelligence support they got and the Iraqi response if there was one. Iran had a far superior navy and air force but during this time Iraq began catching up with new equipment from France, the USSR and other countries. Still all of this is only really interesting for military historians.
The book gets lost in the details and eventually becomes repetitive as most of it is this convoy left with this many ships, it had this many jets, and this many escorts, and then Iraq sent this many helicopters, planes and ships to intercept it and this was the outcome. It repeats this for every convoy for the three years covered in the book.
The authors were able to get into some of the Iranian archives as well as interview members of the opposing forces. There are also a great array of photos you will not see elsewhere and color prints in the middle of aircraft and ships involved.
If you are a diehard fan of the Iran-Iraq War this might interest you but otherwise it is not a release in this series by Helion that really covers a part of the conflict that had an impact.
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