Award-winning historian Mike Walling captures the essence of the Arctic Convoys of World War II.In 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union in the largest offensive operation ever undertaken. Operation Barbarossa saw defeat after defeat heaped on the Soviet army. With Russia's forces left staggering under the strain and in desperate need of supplies, Britain and the United States launched an ambitious operation to resupply the Soviet Union using convoys sent through ...

Bloodstained Sands tells the untold story of the men who stormed beaches around the globe during World War II, from the Sword and Juno Beaches on D-Day to the sands of Iwo Jima.For the men who served in America's Amphibious Forces during World War II, the conflict was an unceasing series of D-Days. They were responsible for putting men ashore in more than 200 landings throughout the conflict, most against well-entrenched enemy positions.Bloodst...

U.S. Army LTC Darron Wright and former U.S. Coast Guard officer Mike Walling join forces to detail a complete, unique history of the Iraq War through first-hand, street-level accounts of the key events and battles that shaped the conflict.From 2003 through 2010, more than 200,000 men and women were deployed in Iraq. For seven years, they fought ferociously in the blistering sands in the Land Between the Two Rivers. Some fought for pride or survival, some to bring d...

“Michael Walling has honored the American men and women who served in Operation Enduring Freedom by helping them tell their own stories. This is the war in Afghanistan as experienced by the people who fought it.” - General Tommy R. Franks, Ret.The war in Afghanistan has seen men and women thrown into America's longest sustained combat operation.For over 13 years, US military personnel have been embroiled in a conflict unlike any ot...

In February 1942, three of the major ships of the German surface fleet – the battle-cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen – stormed out of the harbour at Brest on a dramatic voyage back to Germany.Passing through the straights of Dover, the ships faced everything the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy could throw at them. In a dramatic running fight, the ships managed to sail right under the nose of history's greatest maritime nation...

A historian examines what really happened when the British World War II battleship was torpedoed by a German submarine off the coast of Orkney.Sinking the battleship HMS Royal Oak in the Royal Navy's home anchorage, with the loss of more than 800 of her crew, was Germany's first shattering blow against Britain during World War II. Within six weeks the Germans achieved their goal of breaching the defenses of Scapa Flow. Germany claimed the sinking for the su...

The authors of Bismarck deliver "a very good account of the Tirpitz and of the naval war in the North Atlantic and Norwegian waters" during World War II ( NYMAS Review).After the Royal Navy's bloody high seas campaign to kill the mighty Bismarck, the Allies were left with an uncomfortable truth—the German behemoth had a twin sister. Slightly larger than her sibling, the Tirpitz was equally capable of destroying any other battleship afloat, as well...

Discover the evidence that Vikings walked on American soil—centuries before Columbus.When Columbus claimed to have discovered America in 1492 and the Borgia pope declared it a New World for Catholic Spain, the Vatican started a five-hundred-year conspiracy to conceal the true story of Viking America.In this groundbreaking new work by the author of The Early English Settlement of Orkney and Shetland, the true extent of the Viking discovery and colon...

The Spitfire and the Lancaster were the two RAF weapons of victory in the Second World War, but the glamour of the fighter has tended to overshadow the performance of the heavy bomber. Yet without the Lancaster, Britain would never have been able to take the fight to the German homeland. Highlights the scale of the bomber’s achievements, including the famous Dambusters attacks. With its vast bomb bay, ease of handling and surprising speed, the mighty Lancaster transformed the effectiveness...

The story of the German submarine U-505 and its dramatic capture by the US Navy during WWII—told by one of its crewmen.Hans Goebeler is known as the man who "pulled the plug" on U-505 in 1944 to keep his beloved U-boat out of Allied hands. Steel Boat, Iron Hearts is his no-holds-barred account of service aboard a combat U-boat. It is the only full-length memoir of its kind, and Goebeler was aboard for every one of U-505's war patrols.Using his own ex...

"This concise and well-written book will serve as a valuable library addition for anyone interested in the naval activities of the Great War." —Sea ClassicsThe cruisers of the Imperial German Navy (Kaiserlische Marine) were active throughout the First World War and saw action all around the globe, tying up valuable Allied naval resources out of all proportion to their number. Drawing on firsthand accounts and original research in German archives, the author here des...

In this comprehensive book, the wartime development of the U-Boat is traced along with the experiences of typical U-Boat crewmen, from recruitment to combat.Germany's World War II U-Boat fleet represented the elite of their naval personnel. In terms of technology, training, tactics and combat successes, the U-Boat Waffe was far superior to that of any other combatant nation. Gordon Williamson examines the operational tactics of the U-Boat fleet, as well as describi...