Download or read book Churchill s Secret Weapons written by Patrick Delaforce and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Readers can now discover secrets of WWII and learn some of the lesser known reasons behind Churchill's accomplishments. Two relatively unknown men, along with Churchill, contributed enormously to the country's offensive capabilities. The stow of Churchill, Millis Jefferis and Major General Percy Hobart and the secret weapons that were created from the efforts of all three men is now told in this engaging true story of the life of Churchill and the Second World War.
Download or read book Churchill s Secret Weapon written by and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Churchill s Secret War With Lenin written by Damien Wright and published by Helion and Company. This book was released on 2017-07-27 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of the little-known involvement of Royal Marines as they engaged the new Bolsheviks immediately after the Russian Revolution. After three years of great loss and suffering on the Eastern Front, Imperial Russia was in crisis and on the verge of revolution. In November 1917, Lenin’s Bolsheviks (later known as “Soviets”) seized power, signed a peace treaty with the Central Powers and brutally murdered Tsar Nicholas (British King George’s first cousin) and his children so there could be no return to the old order. As Russia fractured into loyalist “White” and revolutionary “Red” factions, the British government became increasingly drawn into the escalating Russian Civil War after hundreds of thousands of German troops transferred from the Eastern Front to France were used in the 1918 “Spring Offensive” which threatened Paris. What began with the landing of a small number of Royal Marines at Murmansk in March 1918 to protect Allied-donated war stores quickly escalated with the British government actively pursuing an undeclared war against the Bolsheviks on several fronts in support of British trained and equipped “White Russian” Allies. At the height of British military intervention in mid-1919, British troops were fighting the Soviets far into the Russian interior in the Baltic, North Russia, Siberia, Caspian and Crimea simultaneously. The full range of weapons in the British arsenal were deployed including the most modern aircraft, tanks and even poison gas. British forces were also drawn into peripheral conflicts against “White” Finnish troops in North Russia and the German “Iron Division” in the Baltic. It remains a little-known fact that the last British troops killed by the German Army in the First World War were killed in the Baltic in late 1919, nor that the last Canadian and Australian soldiers to die in the First World War suffered their fate in North Russia in 1919 many months after the Armistice. Despite the award of five Victoria Crosses (including one posthumous) and the loss of hundreds of British and Commonwealth soldiers, sailors and airmen, most of whom remain buried in Russia, the campaign remains virtually unknown in Britain today. After withdrawal of all British forces in mid-1920, the British government attempted to cover up its military involvement in Russia by classifying all official documents. By the time files relating to the campaign were quietly released decades later there was little public interest. Few people in Britain today know that their nation ever fought a war against the Soviet Union. The culmination of more than 15 years of painstaking and exhaustive research with access to many previously classified official documents, unpublished diaries, manuscripts and personal accounts, author Damien Wright has written the first comprehensive campaign history of British and Commonwealth military intervention in the Russian Civil War 1918-20. “Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War remains forgotten. Wright’s book addresses that oversight, interspersing the broader story with personal accounts of participants.” —Military History Magazine
Download or read book Churchill s Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare written by Giles Milton and published by Picador. This book was released on 2017-02-07 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Six gentlemen, one goal: the destruction of Hitler's war machine In the spring of 1939, a top-secret organization was founded in London: its purpose was to plot the destruction of Hitler's war machine through spectacular acts of sabotage. The guerrilla campaign that followed was every bit as extraordinary as the six men who directed it. One of them, Cecil Clarke, was a maverick engineer who had spent the 1930s inventing futuristic caravans. Now, his talents were put to more devious use: he built the dirty bomb used to assassinate Hitler's favorite, Reinhard Heydrich. Another, William Fairbairn, was a portly pensioner with an unusual passion: he was the world's leading expert in silent killing, hired to train the guerrillas being parachuted behind enemy lines. Led by dapper Scotsman Colin Gubbins, these men—along with three others—formed a secret inner circle that, aided by a group of formidable ladies, single-handedly changed the course Second World War: a cohort hand-picked by Winston Churchill, whom he called his Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. Giles Milton's Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is a gripping and vivid narrative of adventure and derring-do that is also, perhaps, the last great untold story of the Second World War.
Download or read book Secret Weapons of World War II written by Gerald Pawle and published by . This book was released on 2017-06-07 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Second World War was a war of science, a war which could be won with new weapons." Sir Winston Churchill The Department of Miscellaneous Weapon Development, known colloquially as the Wheezers and Dodgers, was created by the British in 1941 in the aftermath of the Nazi victories in Europe. For the next four years they would become instrumental in the secret war against Germany, developing a wide array of armaments to give Britain the upper hand against the might of the Axis forces. Under the guidance of Charles Goodeve, a remarkable Canadian with a flair for picking out which invention could tip the war in the Allies' favor, these scientists and inventors worked tirelessly, and even put their lives on the line, in the quest to give Churchill's military the knockout weapon. As Nevil Shute, who was an engineer with the Wheezers and Dodgers stated, "If any one quality was a common requirement for the officers in this unusual department I would say it was imagination -- the imagination to look forward and to visualize what might happen." Not all of their inventions were successful, indeed Sir Charles Madden, who served as staff officer to the Director of the Department stated that during his time there he dealt with "a medley of suggestions ranging from the impractical to the lunatic." Yet, despite some mishaps, the Wheezers and Dodgers were instrumental in aiding the Allies to victory, with their degaussing method of protecting ships from mines to their Hedgehog weapon that destroyed over forty-five enemy submarines. Secret Weapons of World War II records all of the Department's developments through the course of the conflict, both successful and not, and is written with humor and insight. "Their story has the fascination of the unexpected, in a British well-played spirit." Kirkus Reviews Gerald Pawle worked with the Wheezers and Dodgers through the course of World War Two. This work was first published under the title The Secret War: 1939-1945 in 1957. Pawle passed away in 1991.
Download or read book Winston Churchill s Toyshop written by Stuart MacRae and published by Amberley Publishing Limited. This book was released on 2010-02-15 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of Churchill's personal weapons development department, staffed by ingenious boffins, who developed numerous innovative weapons that helped win the war.
Download or read book The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare written by Damien Lewis and published by Quercus. This book was released on 2015-09-08 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the award-winning historian, war reporter, and author Damien Lewis (Zero Six Bravo, Judy) comes the incredible true story of the top-secret "butcher-and-bolt" black ops units Prime Minister Winston Churchill assigned the task of stopping the unstoppable German war machine. Criminals, rogues, and survivalists, the brutal tactics and grit of these "deniables" would define a military unit the likes of which the world had never seen. When France fell to the Nazis in spring 1940, Churchill declared that Britain would resist the advance of the German army--alone if necessary. Churchill commanded the Special Operations Executive to secretly develop of a very special kind of military unit that would operate on their own initiative deep behind enemy lines. The units would be licensed to kill, fully deniable by the British government, and a ruthless force to meet the advancing Germans. The very first of these "butcher-and-bolt" units--the innocuously named Maid Honour Force--was led by Gus March-Phillipps, a wild British eccentric of high birth, and an aristocratic, handsome, and bloodthirsty young Danish warrior, Anders Lassen. Amped up on amphetamines, these assorted renegades and sociopaths undertook the very first of Churchill's special operations--a top-secret, high-stakes mission to seize Nazi shipping in the far-distant port of Fernando Po, in West Africa. Though few of these early desperadoes survived WWII, they took part in a series of fascinating, daring missions that changed the course of the war. It was the first stirrings of the modern special-ops team, and all of the men involved would be declared war heroes when it was all over. The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare focuses on a dozen of these extraordinary men, weaving their stories of brotherhood, comradely, and elite soldiering into a gripping narrative yarn, from the earliest missions to Anders Lassen's tragic death, just weeks before the end of the war.
Download or read book Secret Weapons of World War II written by William B. Breuer and published by Turner Publishing Company. This book was released on 2007-08-24 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Critical Acclaim for Secret Weapons of World War II "Breuer has produced yet another collection of rip-roaring tales. . . . A delightful addition to the niche that Breuer has so successfully carved out." -Publishers Weekly "It is Breuer's portrayal of the competition for technological superiority between the Allies and the Nazis that grabs the reader and shows the significance of each wartime discovery and invention." -State Journal-Register, Springfield, Illinois In the fast-paced, suspenseful Secret Weapons of World War II, noted military historian William Breuer chronicles the clandestine battle that occurred between the brilliant scientists and codebreakers of the Allies and the Axis powers. Re-creating the covert missions, hoaxes, spying, conspiracies, and electronic sleuthing, Breuer deftly uncovers the spectacular feats of the fascinating men and women who determined the outcome of the war-providing an unprecedented look at the least-known operations and plots conducted by both sides.
Download or read book Churchill s Hellraisers written by Damien Lewis and published by Citadel Press. This book was released on 2020-08-25 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From award-winning war reporter Damien Lewis, the untold story of the heroic hellraisers who stormed a Nazi fortress—in one of the most daring raids of World War II . . . Winter, 1944. Allied forces have liberated most of Axis-occupied Italy—with one crucial exception: the Nazi headquarters north of the Gothic Line. Heavily guarded and surrounded by rugged terrain, the mountain fortress is nearly impenetrable. But British Prime Minister Winston Churchill is determined to drive a dagger into the “soft underbelly of Europe.” The Allied’s plan: drop two paratroopers into the mountains—and take the fortress by storm . . . The two brave men knew the risks involved, so they recruited an equally fearless team: Italian resistance fighters, escaped POWs, downed US airmen, even a bagpipe-playing Scotsman known as “The Mad Piper.” Some had little military training, but all were willing to fight to the death to defeat the Nazi enemy. Ultimately, the mission that began in broad daylight, in the enemy’s line of fire, would end one of the darkest chapters in history—through the courage and conviction of the unsung heroes who dared the impossible . . . “One of the most dangerous and effective attacks ever undertaken by this Regiment against the enemy.” —Lt Col Robert Walker‐Brown, MBE DSO, senior SAS commander “Action-packed . . . Battleground history buffs will be entertained.” —Publishers Weekly
Download or read book SOE Agent written by Terry Crowdy and published by Osprey Publishing. This book was released on 2008-11-18 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Osprey's study of Special Operations Executive (SOE) agents during World War II (1939-1945). On average an SOE agent would be dead within three months of being dropped in the field. Terry Crowdy tells the extraordinary story of these agents, some of whom were women as young as 22, following them through their experiences beginning with their recruitment and unorthodox training methods, particularly the unarmed combat training provided by the notorious Fairburn and Sykes partnership. As well as detailing these controversial techniques, the training chapter also covers the tough physical training course and parachute training that all recruits had to endure before being sent into occupied Europe. Crowdy also examines the SOE's unique system of codes, which included each agent composing their own poem as well as using quotations from famous pieces of literature to convey secret messages, and explores the strengths and weaknesses of this system. Full-color artwork and photographs show the innovative equipment, including the S-Phones and Eureka sets, which allowed the agent to communicate directly with pilots and other agents. Lastly, the book recounts the incredible combat missions of the SOE agents, including operations in the field with Yugoslav and Greek partisans, as well as sabotage missions ranging from blowing up bridges to the raising of full-scale partisan armies as they attempted to fulfill Churchill's directive to set Occupied Europe ablaze.
Download or read book Churchill s Secret Messenger written by Alan Hlad and published by A John Scognamiglio Book. This book was released on 2021-04-27 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A riveting story of World War II and the courage of one young woman as she is drafted into Churchill’s overseas spy network, aiding the French Resistance behind enemy lines and working to liberate Nazi-occupied Paris… London, 1941: In a cramped bunker in Winston Churchill’s Cabinet War Rooms, underneath Westminster’s Treasury building, civilian women huddle at desks, typing up confidential documents and reports. Since her parents were killed in a bombing raid, Rose Teasdale has spent more hours than usual in Room 60, working double shifts, growing accustomed to the burnt scent of the Prime Minister’s cigars permeating the stale air. Winning the war is the only thing that matters, and she will gladly do her part. And when Rose’s fluency in French comes to the attention of Churchill himself, it brings a rare yet dangerous opportunity. Rose is recruited for the Special Operations Executive, a secret British organization that conducts espionage in Nazi-occupied Europe. After weeks of grueling training, Rose parachutes into France with a new codename: Dragonfly. Posing as a cosmetics saleswoman in Paris, she ferries messages to and from the Resistance, knowing that the slightest misstep means capture or death. Soon Rose is assigned to a new mission with Lazare Aron, a French Resistance fighter who has watched his beloved Paris become a shell of itself, with desolate streets and buildings draped in Swastikas. Since his parents were sent to a German work camp, Lazare has dedicated himself to the cause with the same fervor as Rose. Yet Rose’s very loyalty brings risks as she undertakes a high-stakes prison raid, and discovers how much she may have to sacrifice to justify Churchill’s faith in her . . . "A rousing historical novel." - The Akron Beacon Journal, Best Books of the Year for Churchill's Secret Messenger
Download or read book Churchill s Bomb written by Graham Farmelo and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Churchill's Bomb - from the author of the Costa award-winning biography The Strangest Man - reveals a new aspect of Winston Churchill's life, so far completely neglected by historians: his relations with his nuclear scientists, and his management of Britain's policy on atomic weapons. Churchill was the only prominent politician to foresee the nuclear age and he played a leading role in the development of the Bomb during World War II. He became the first British Prime Minister with access to these weapons, and left office following desperate attempts during the Cold War to end the arms race. Graham Farmelo traces the beginnings of Churchill's association with nuclear weapons to his unlikely friendship with H. G. Wells, who coined the term 'atomic bombs'. In the 1930s, when Ernest Rutherford and his brilliant followers, such as Chadwick and Cockcroft, gave Britain the lead in nuclear research, Churchill wrote several widely read newspaper articles on the huge implications of their work. British physicists, in 1940, first showed that the Bomb was a practical possibility. But Churchill, closely advised by his favourite scientist, the controversial Frederick Lindemann, allowed leadership to pass to the US, where the Manhattan Project made the Bomb a terrible reality. British physicists played only a minor role in this vast enterprise, while Churchill ignored warnings from the scientist Niels Bohr that the Anglo-American policy would lead to a post-war arms race. After the war, the Americans reneged on personal agreements between Roosevelt and Churchill to share research. Clement Attlee, in a fateful decision, ordered the building of a British Bomb to maintain the country's place among the great powers. Churchill inherited it and ended his political career obsessed with the threat of thermonuclear war. Churchill's Bomb is an original and controversial book, full of political and scientific personalities and intrigues, which reveals a little-known side of Britain's great war-leader.
Download or read book Churchill s Secret Invasion written by John Grehan and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2013-09-19 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the spring of 1942 Britain's far-flung empire was in the greatest peril. North Africa was being overrun by the German Afrika Korps and in south-east Asia the forces of Imperial Japan had captured Singapore and were threatening India. Only the most urgent reinforcement of both war fronts could prevent disaster. But Britain's shipping routes to Egypt and India passed the island of Madagascar. If the Japanese Navy, operating out of Madagascar, could severe Britain's communications with Cairo and Delhi, then the whole of North Africa and the Indian sub-continent would be at the mercy of the Axis Powers. In a desperate race against time, and under conditions of the utmost secrecy, at Churchill's instigation Britain planned to seize Madagascar, the fourth largest island in the world, before the Japanese could strike. An overwhelming force was assembled and despatched as part of the largest convoy ever to have left Britain's shores. Yet the expedition's commanders were faced with not just military but also political obstacles, because the forces occupying the island were not those her enemy's but those of her former ally - France. The Secret Invasion is the first book to examine in detail this crucial campaign which was Britain's largest amphibious assault since the First World War and the first large-scale combined air, sea and land operation Britain had attempted.
Download or read book The Great Secret The Classified World War II Disaster that Launched the War on Cancer written by Jennet Conant and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2020-09-08 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The gripping story of a chemical weapons catastrophe, the cover-up, and how one American Army doctor’s discovery led to the development of the first drug to combat cancer, known today as chemotherapy. On the night of December 2, 1943, the Luftwaffe bombed a critical Allied port in Bari, Italy, sinking seventeen ships and killing over a thousand servicemen and hundreds of civilians. Caught in the surprise air raid was the John Harvey, an American Liberty ship carrying a top-secret cargo of 2,000 mustard bombs to be used in retaliation if the Germans resorted to gas warfare. When one young sailor after another began suddenly dying of mysterious symptoms, Lieutenant Colonel Stewart Alexander, a doctor and chemical weapons expert, was dispatched to investigate. He quickly diagnosed mustard gas exposure, but was overruled by British officials determined to cover up the presence of poison gas in the devastating naval disaster, which the press dubbed "little Pearl Harbor." Prime Minister Winston Churchill and General Dwight D. Eisenhower acted in concert to suppress the truth, insisting the censorship was necessitated by military security. Alexander defied British port officials and heroically persevered in his investigation. His final report on the Bari casualties was immediately classified, but not before his breakthrough observations about the toxic effects of mustard on white blood cells caught the attention of Colonel Cornelius P. Rhoads—a pioneering physician and research scientist as brilliant as he was arrogant and self-destructive—who recognized that the poison was both a killer and a cure, and ushered in a new era of cancer research led by the Sloan Kettering Institute. Meanwhile, the Bari incident remained cloaked in military secrecy, resulting in lost records, misinformation, and considerable confusion about how a deadly chemical weapon came to be tamed for medical use. Deeply researched and beautifully written, The Great Secret is the remarkable story of how horrific tragedy gave birth to medical triumph.
Download or read book Churchill s Shadow Raiders written by Damien Lewis and published by Citadel Press. This book was released on 2020-04-28 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From bestselling and award-winning war reporter Damien Lewis and for fans of Erik Larsen’s The Splendid and Vile and Alex Kershaw’s The Forgotten 500 comes a thrilling account of one of the most daring raids of WWII…the true story of the race to stop Hitler from developing a top-secret weapon that would change the course of history. "One of the most readable World War 2 history books I have read in years” —We Are the Mighty In the winter of 1941, as Britain faced defeat on all fronts, an RAF reconnaissance pilot photographed an alien-looking object on the French coast near Le Havre. The mysterious device—a “Wurzburg Dish”—appeared to be a new form of radar technology: ultra-compact, highly precise, and pointed directly across the English Channel. Britain’s experts found it hard to believe the Germans had mastered such groundbreaking technology. But one young technician thought it not only possible, he convinced Winston Churchill that the dish posed a unique and deadly threat to Allied forces, one that required desperate measures—and drastic action . . . Capturing the radar on film had been an amazing coup. Stealing it away from under the noses of the Nazis would be remarkable. So was launched Operation Biting, a mission like no other. An extraordinary “snatch-and-grab” raid on Germany’s secret radar installation, it offered Churchill’s elite airborne force, the Special Air Service, a rare opportunity to redeem themselves after a previous failed mission—and to shift the tides of war forever. Led by the legendary Major John Frost, these brave paratroopers would risk all in a daring airborne assault, with only a small stretch of beach menaced by enemy guns as their exit point. With the help of a volunteer radar technician who knew how to dismantle the dish, as well as the courageous men and women of the French Resistance, they succeeded against all odds in their act of brazen robbery. Some would die. Others would be captured. All fought with resolute bravery . . . This is the story of that fateful night of February 27, 1942. A brilliantly told, thrillingly tense account of Churchill’s raiders in their finest hour, this is World War II history at its heart-stopping best. “This highly informative book almost reads like a genuine techno-thriller." —New York Journal of Books “A little-known behind-the-lines spectacular led by two heroic British officers.” —Kirkus Reviews “Anyone who wants to learn more about the origins of the British Special Forces should read this book. It intertwines historical research and eyewitness testimony to tell the untold story of heroism, courage, and ingenuity.” —Military Press “Lewis presents a richly detailed and nail-biting tale.” —Library Journal
Download or read book Secret Weapons written by Brian J Ford and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2013-09-20 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Deep in the bunkers of Nazi Germany, many of the world's top scientists worked to create a new generation of war winning super-weapons. A few of these, such as jet aircraft and the V2 rocket, became realities at the end of the war, others never made it off the drawing-board. Written by noted research scientist, Brian Ford, this exciting book charts the history of secret weapons development by all the major powers during the war, from British radar to Japanese ray-guns, and explains the impact that these developments eventually had on the outcome of World War II. Ford also takes a look at the weapons that never made it to development stage, as well as the more radical plans, such as the idea of turning Hitler into a woman with hormone treatment.
Download or read book Catch That Tiger written by Noel Botham and published by Kings Road Publishing. This book was released on 2013 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With exclusive access to private diaries and dozens of photographs, this is the incredible story of one of the most dangerous and thrilling secret missions of World War II Unleashed by Hitler in 1942, the German Tiger tank was by far the most powerful tank ever built at the time--the 60-ton monster could destroy any Allied tank from more than a mile away. Desperate to discover the secret technology used in its manufacture, Winston Churchill chose a brilliant young army engineer, Major Doug Lidderdale, as his special agent. In a late-night briefing in the subterranean war rooms under Whitehall he ordered him "Go catch me a tiger." By February 1943, Doug was facing Rommel's desert army. After several hair-raising efforts to bag a Tiger on the battlefields of Tunisia, Doug and his team put their lives on the line in a terrifying shoot-out with the five-man crew of a Tiger, capturing the tank intact. The morale boost to the Allies was such that both Churchill and King George VI flew to Tunis to examine the Tiger firsthand. But the Germans were not finished with Doug--constant attacks by the Luftwaffe and U-boats pursued him and his men on the journey back to England. But by October 1943, the Tiger was gifted to Churchill, who had it placed on London's Horse Guards Parade. Lidderdale went on to use some of the Tiger technology to develop war machines for the D-day landings and was promoted to Colonel. Tiger 131 is now kept at Bovington Tank Museum and is the only working Tiger in the world. The full extent of Doug's adventures only came to light after his son, Dave Travis, revealed the existence of his father's diaries.
