This WWII naval history chronicles the development of small fighting boats as well as the evolution of their tactics and coastal warfare operations.Small, fast and highly maneuverable, gunboats and motor torpedo boats were a vital part of naval combat through the Second World War. Every major naval power built their own versions: The Germans had Schnellboote, the Royal Navy had MTBs and MGBs, and the Americans had PT boats. With their daring night raids and close-ra...

When tanks, the newly invented British weapon, were used for the first time in a mass attack on November 20 1917, they not only achieved one of the most remarkable successes of the First World War but set the pattern for the future of mechanized warfare. For the first time in three years of bloody trench warfare, epitomized by the slaughter at Passchendaele which was then reaching its climax, tanks brought about a breakthrough of the massive German defense system of the Hindenburg Line, fo...

One of the major lessons of World War II was the importance of coastal waters. It was not widely recognised beforehand just how vital the control of such waters would become, both in defending essential convoys as well as attacking those of the enemy, and in paving the way for amphibious landings.While land based aircraft could carry out offshore operations by day and destroyers and cruisers patrolled deeper waters, the ideal craft for use in coastal waters were motor boats armed with torp...

Failure to exploit the potential of an original idea is a recurring phenomenon in our national history. Few failures, however, can have been so costly in human life as that of our military commanders early in 1916 to appreciate that the tank was a war winning weapon. The slaughter of the Somme, Passchendaele and Ypres salient had to be endured before accepted 'conventional' methods were abandoned and the tank given a chance. Bryan Cooper describes the early tank actions in vivid detail, wi...

"The story of the division from formation in Ireland in August 1914 to departure from Gallipoli for Macedonia in October 1915.This history covers the period from the raising of the division to its departure from Gallipoli for Macedonia in October 1915. It was the first divisional history to appear in print, and it is a matter for regret that its scope is so narrow a one. As a history its limitation is that it is based mainly on the author's memory (he served in the division with 5th...

Bryan Cooper's "The Tenth (Irish) Division in Gallipoli" provides a meticulously detailed account of the Tenth (Irish) Division's role in the Gallipoli campaign during World War I. The narrative captures the division's formation, their harrowing journey to the Dardanelles, and the brutal combat they faced. Cooper's work highlights themes of bravery, camaraderie, and the futility of war. He paints a vivid picture of the challenges these soldiers faced, from logistical nightmares to fierce o...

CARRIER STRIKEThe Battle of the Santa Cruz IslandsOctober 1942By Eric HammelThe Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, a strategic naval action in the bitter Guadalcanal Campaign, was historys fourth carrier-versus-carrier naval battle. Though technically a Japanese victory, the battle proved to be the Empire of Japans last serious attempt to win the Pacific War by means of an all-out carrier confrontation. Only one other carrier battle occurred in the Pacific War, in June 1944, in the Philippine ...

The bestselling, award-winning author of The American Invasion of Canada "has given great drama and immediacy to that turning point in Canadian history" ( Maclean's).On Easter Monday 1917 with a blizzard blowing in their faces, the four divisions of the Canadian Corps in France seized and held the best-defended German bastion on the Western Front—the muddy scarp of Vimy Ridge. The British had failed to take the Ridge, and so had the French who had...

Author Jeffrey Cox conducts a thorough and compelling investigation of the Java Sea Campaign, the first major sea battle of the Pacific War, which inflicted huge costs on the Allies and set the stage for Japan's rout across the Pacific and Indian oceans.Few events have ever shaken a country in the way that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor affected the United States. The Japanese forces then continued to overwhelm the Allies, attacking Malaya with its fortress of...

In 2010 the Army fielded new rifle ammunition to its soldiers in Afghanistan. Developed as part of a program to produce lead-free ammunition, this new rifle bullet produced a storm of outrage from the firearms community, who derided the new ammunition as needless "green wash" at a time when troops were dying in combat. This is the story of what really happened: how what started as a program to be more environmentally friendly became a significant upgrade in military small arms capability.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER"Son, we’re going to Hell."The navigator of the USS Houston confided these prophetic words to a young officer as he and his captain charted a course into U.S. naval legend. Renowned as FDR’s favorite warship, the cruiser USS Houston was a prize target trapped in the far Pacific after Pearl Harbor. Without hope of reinforcement, her crew faced a superior Japanese force ruthlessly committed to total conquest...

The biography of a British battleship, from an author with " a facility for rendering nonfiction into a narrative as brisk and readable as a novel" ( HistoryNet).The Second World War battleship HMS Rodney achieved lasting fame for her role in destroying the pride of Hitler's navy, the mighty Bismarck, in a thrilling duel. The Rodney, carrying the largest guns ever mounted in a British warship, finally succeeded i...