“You can handle more than you think you can.”
Adam Makos is the author of Spearhead, which is one of the most engaging, well researched and written, readable military history books I’ve ever read. It came out in 2019, and I’ve been watching for his next book ever since. It’s here! Tidal Wave is the sort of story that, if it were published as historical fiction, would be panned by many as simply unbelievable. Where’s the credibility? But it did happen, and this is not fiction.
My thanks go to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for the review copy. This book will be available to the public November 3, 2026.
We start with an elite group of pilots from the U.S. Air Force. It’s the autumn of 1943, and the boys—and back then, they were all boys and young men—have been sent to North Africa on a top secret mission. They are to fly nonstop to Romania, which is an Axis nation, also known as “Hitler’s Gas Station” for its large-scale oil refineries, and they are to bomb the living hell out of those refineries in broad daylight at low altitude, to avoid radar detection and diminish civilian casualties. It’s massively dangerous; some might call it a suicide mission. But if successful, it will deal a massive blow to the Nazi war machine.
“If not one bomber returns tomorrow, but that target is wiped out, the mission will still be a success.”
Meanwhile, Romanians are chafing under Nazi rule. Nobody there volunteered for this; the Nazis came in and announced they were taking all the oil, and they would pay for it at below market prices. The Nazis were tolerated because they promised to return territory that was usurped by the Soviet Union at the conclusion of World War I.
Add to this story a royal family that determines to covertly help the American pilots that have been shot down over their country, and for good measure, sprinkle it with local orphans, and you have—in author Makos’s capable hands—one hell of a war story. The captured pilots make a break for it, and their struggle, along with the danger they face, makes this story a nail-biter even though we know how it’s going to turn out, at least in large measure.
Those that sigh and sit back after seeing the genre—military history—should know that this reads like narrative nonfiction. I was reading a couple of pretty good novels alternately with this one, but this is the one that kept me awake late at night, because I had to know who made it and who did not. Add into this the twist at the end regarding the Romanian princess and the enemy pilot, and you have a matchless story.
Highly recommended to all.
