Download or read book The Oxford Illustrated History of the Royal Navy written by J. R. Hill and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2002 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Britain is an island nation and throughout history its navy has been of great importance for its defence. As a consequence it has always had a special significance and has over the centuries entrenched itself in the national psyche, making itself manifest not only through the hero-worship ofits principal characters such as Horatio Nelson and Sir Francis Drake but also finding expression through art, music, and literature.Like any great national institution, the navy is a complex web of interconnected histories - operational, strategic, political, economic, administrative, technological, and social. Now updated for its paperback edition, The Oxford Illustrated History of the Royal Navy, in a series of fourteenchapters, provides a thorough and engaging treatment of these histories, covering every aspect of naval history from the Anglo-Saxon period to the dawn of the new millennium.The book explores:Major action and campaigns - the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the Anglo-Dutch Wars, the Battle of Trafalgar, the Battle of Jutland, the Atlantic Campaign of 1939-45, the Falklands conflict, the Gulf War, and attacks on terrorist bases in Afghanistan in 2001.Developments in naval history and technology - navigational advances, surveying, constructional developments, disaster relief, the suppression of the slave trade, and the Strategic Defence Review of 1998.Key personalities - Drake and Nelson, Samuel Pepys, Francis Beaufort, Jackie Fisher, Lord Charles Beresford, Lord Jellicoe.Naval life - recruitment (press gangs, training, education, discipline), tactics, gunnery and armaments, amphibious operations, wages and conditions, victualling and supply.How and when did Britain's perception of the sea change from a thing of fear to a 'moat defence' (in the words of Shakespeare)?How did the navy's administrative systems develop during the Tudor period?During the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, its greatest period of expansion, how did the navy develop strategically and operationally?How successfully did the navy defend the British Empire during the nineteenth century?What role did the navy play in Victorian Britain's thirst for exploring of the world?What technical developments have been important to the navy?What effect did two world wars have on the role of the Royal Navy?What does the modern navy look like now and what about the future?With a full chronology, which has been brought up to date to the end of 2001, an extensive list of further reading, 16 pages of colour plates, 23 maps, 6 special Action Station diagram 'box' features, and around 200 black-and-white integrated illustrations, this is an authoritative and highlyreadable account of a unique fighting service and its people.

Download or read book The Royal Australian Navy in World War II written by David Stevens and published by Allen & Unwin. This book was released on 2005 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive account of the part the Royal Australian Navy played in the Second World War.

Download or read book The Royal Australian Navy written by George Odgers and published by . This book was released on 1985 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Collins Class Submarine Story written by Peter Yule and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2008-06-02 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A unique and outstanding military and industrial achievement, the Collins class submarine project was also plagued with difficulties and mired in politics. Its story is one of heroes and villains, grand passions, intrigue, lies, spies and backstabbing. It is as well a story of enormous commitment and resolve to achieve what many thought impossible. The building of these submarines was Australia's largest, most expensive and most controversial military project. From initiation in the 1981–2 budget to the delivery of the last submarine in 2003, the total cost was in excess of six billion dollars. Over 130 key players were interviewed for this book, and the Australian Defence Department allowed access to its classified archives and the Australian Navy archives. Vividly illustrated with photographs from the collections of the Royal Australian Navy and ASC Pty Ltd, The Collins Class Submarine Story: Steel, Spies and Spin, first published in 2008, is a riveting and accessibly written chronicle of a grand-scale quest for excellence.

Download or read book The Face of Naval Battle written by David Stevens and published by Allen & Unwin. This book was released on 2003 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes bibliographical references (p. 319-350) and index.

Download or read book Seapower Ashore written by Peter Hore and published by Bloomsbury Academic. This book was released on 2001 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For more than two-hundred years the Royal Navy's dominance of the seas was complemented by its ability to project force ashore. In this book a group of prominent naval historians--Tom Pocock, Michael Duffy, Colin White, Andrew Lambert, Richard Brooks, and Chris Page--examine the naval brigade's role on land. Starting with Sidney Smith's defense of Acre in 1799, it continues through Nelson's Corsica campaign, the Indian Mutiny, the Anglo-Japanese War of 1863-4, the Crimean and Boer Wars, and both world wars. From little-known incidents during "Queen Victoria's Little Wars" to modern Tomahawk missile technology and littoral warfare, this rousing tribute is an essential addition to the Royal Navy canon.

Download or read book U S Battleships written by Norman Friedman and published by US Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2016-03-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book covers the development of U.S. battleships, from the Maine and Texas of 1886, through the Montana class of World War II, up to the recommissioned Iowas. It examines the original designs as well as the many modifications and reconstructions these ships underwent during their long and active careers. Like the other books in Norman Friedmans design-history series, U.S. Battleships is based largely on formerly classified internal U.S. Navy records. But research for this book has also included a full survey of British files, both those compiled when American ships served with the Royal Navy in the two world wars and those supplied by British battleship designers attached to the U.S. Navy. In addition, the author consulted official battle damage reports to help evaluate various designs.

Download or read book Then Now Always written by Air Force History Branch and published by . This book was released on 2021-11-04 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Royal Australian Air Force has come a long way since its early beginnings in the Australian Flying Corps, an element of the Australian Army. From its birth as a fledgling little brother of the other two services, the RAAF has developed over the years in its elements of raising, training and sustaining an effective force, its people, its tools of the trade, its involvement in operations and peacetime activities, and how it looks to the future. Commemorating the 100 Year Anniversary of the Royal Australian Air Force, Then. Now. Always covers the story of the AFC and the RAAF during time of both war and peace, with carefully researched text relating to various stages of the life of the RAAF. These historical facts have been combined with interesting personal adventures to provide a holistic view of the RAAF story, and is illustrated throughout with an extensive range of both black and white, and colour photographs.

Download or read book U S Amphibious Ships and Craft written by Norman Friedman and published by US Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 724 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this latest addition to his acclaimed U.S. warship design history series, Norman Friedman describes the ships and the craft of the U.S. amphibious force, from its inception in the 1920s through World War II to the present. He explains how and why the United States successfully created an entirely new kind of fleet to fight and win such World War II battles as D-Day and the island landings in the Pacific. To an extent not previously documented, his book lays out the differing views and contributions of the U.S. Army, Navy, and Marines as well as the British, and how they affected the development of prewar and wartime amphibious forces. Current and future amphibious forces and tactics are explained, together with their implications for ships and craft, from 40,000-ton amphibious carriers down to tracked amphibious vehicles.As in earlier volumes in the series, this study uses previously unpublished sources to illustrate not only what was actually built but what was planned and never brought into service. For example, the book offers the first comprehensive and fully illustrated account of abortive attempts in the 1960s and beyond to build new fire support ships (LFS). With nearly two hundred photographs and specially commissioned line drawings and extensive appendixes, the work conveniently brings together details of the ships and their service histories found elsewhere only in scattered official references.

Download or read book Combat at Close Quarters written by Edward J. Marolda and published by US Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A heavily-illustrated coffee-table book on U.S. Naval operations in the Vietnam War.

Download or read book In Peace and War written by Kenneth J. Hagan and published by Greenwood. This book was released on 1984 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A series of monographs, essays, and papers that attempt to assess the navy as an institutional expression of the American experience."--p. [xiii].

Download or read book Very Special Ships written by Arthur Nicholson and published by Seaforth Publishing. This book was released on 2015-10-30 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Very Special Ships is the first full-length book about the six Abdiel-class fast minelayers, the fastest and most versatile ships to serve in the Royal Navy in the Second World War. They operated not only as offensive minelayers – dashing into enemy waters under cover of darkness – but in many other roles, most famously as blockade runners to Malta. In lieu of mines, they transported items as diverse as ammunition, condensed milk, gold, and VIPs. Distinguished by their three funnels, the Abdiels were attractive, well-designed ships, and they were also unique – no other navy had such ships, and so they were sought-after commands and blessed with fine captains. To give the fullest picture of this important class of ships, the book details the origins and history of mines, minelayers, and minelaying; covers the origins and design of the class; describes the construction of each of the six ships, and the modified design of the last two; tells in detail of the operational careers of the ships in the second World War, when they played vital roles in the battle of Crete and the siege of Malta, plied the hazardous route to Tobruk, and laid mines off the Italian coast. The post-war careers of the surviving ships is also documented. Written to appeal to naval enthusiasts, students of World War II and modelmakers, the author tells the story of these ships through first-hand accounts, official sources, and specially- commissioned drawings and photographs.

Download or read book British Cruisers written by Norman Friedman and published by Seaforth Publishing. This book was released on 2011-01-24 with total page 680 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An extraordinarily detailed account of the development of Royal Navy cruisers . . . a towering work” from the author of Fighting the Great War at Sea (Warship 2012). For most of the twentieth century, Britain possessed both the world’s largest merchant fleet and its most extensive overseas territories. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Royal Navy always showed a particular interest in the cruiser—a multipurpose warship needed in large numbers to defend trade routes and police the empire. Above all other types, the cruiser’s competing demands of quality and quantity placed a heavy burden on designers, and for most of the interwar period, Britain sought to square this circle through international treaties restricting both size and numbers. In the process, she virtually invented the heavy cruiser and inspired the large 6in-armed cruiser, neither of which, ironically, served her best interests. This book seeks to comprehend, for the first time, the full policy background—from which a different and entirely original picture of British cruiser development emerges. After the war, the cruiser’s role was reconsidered, and the final chapters of the book cover modernizations, the plans for missile-armed ships, and the convoluted process that turned the “through-deck cruiser” into the Invincible class light carriers. With detailed appendices of ship data, and illustrated in depth with photos and A.D. Baker’s specially commissioned plans, British Cruisers truly matches the lofty standards set by Friedman’s previous books on British destroyers. “Wow! . . . Lavishly illustrated with a photograph or line plan on almost every page. The text is packed with technical information, detail, and description of design, construction and application of these important ships.” —Clash of Steel

Download or read book A Ceaseless Watch written by Angus Britts and published by Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2021-04-15 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Ceaseless Watch: Australia’s Third Party Naval Defense, 1919–1942 illustrates how Australia confronted the need to base its post–World War I defense planning around the security provided by a major naval power: in the first instance, Britain, and later the United States. Spanning the period leading up to Australia’s greatest security crisis—the military threat posed by Japan throughout the majority of 1942—the work takes the reader all the way up to the defeat of the Imperial Japanese Navy by the United States Navy in the Solomon Islands campaign. Angus Britts focuses on Anglo-Australian defense relations from 1919–42 when the British were Australia’s primary naval protectors until they were superseded in the Pacific by the United States in May 1942 at the battle of the Coral Sea. Britts traces the process of the alignment or divergence of differing strategic interests between Australia and Britain in particular. Taking place against the backdrop of Imperial Japan’s expansionism debates within Australian political and defense circles during this period, namely the nature of the most likely threat to the continent itself, what became an important subplot to the events then unfolding in the Pacific. Looking at the development of the “Singapore strategy” which utilized the British fleet at Singapore to protect Australia’s interests, Britts lays out how the cornerstone for Australian defense planning was based on the continued assurances from successive British governments that they would honor their naval commitments should Australia itself eventually come under serious threat from Japanese aggression. The Australian-American defense relationship evolved at a later stage within the timeframe in this work, but the varying interactions between both nations throughout the interwar years are likewise addressed, as is the foundation of their wartime relations. Britts illustrates the difficulty in forming a defense relationship between small and great powers, where the needs of the former are not subsumed by the interests of the latter, from the interwar years to the start of World War II. In an era when the entire Pacific region was at war, the inability of a larger power to fulfill its side of a defensive pact with a smaller power shaped the future of the region itself.

Download or read book Teddy Sheean VC written by Doctor Tom Lewis and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-03-03 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No-one will ever know what made him do it. In 1942, 18-year-old Edward “Teddy” Sheean was one of the youngest and most inexperienced sailors on board the the corvette HMAS Armidale. Whilst on operation in the Timor Sea this warship came under heavy attack by Japanese aircraft. Armidale began sinking while swarmed by Japanese aircraft, strafing and bombing the stricken vessel and the crew who were desperately trying to Abandon Ship. The wounded Ordinary Seaman turned back to his gun, an Oerlikon 20mm anti-aircraft cannon and strapped himself into the harness. He began firing at the attacking Japanese aircraft, a courageous young man, determined to do his best to save his mates. This selfless act of valour helped save the lives of 49 crew, before Teddy himself went down with the Armidale. No member of the Royal Australian Navy has ever been awarded a Victoria Cross. Teddy’s family and many others took up his case and fought for his recognition. It took more than 70 years for Teddy to becomes the first in Australia’s Naval history to receive this highest award ¬– confirming Teddy Sheean is an Australian hero. Sheean is the 101st VC awarded to an Australian

Download or read book Australian National Bibliography written by and published by National Library Australia. This book was released on 1978 with total page 1734 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book What Ship Where Bound written by David Craddock and published by Seaforth Publishing. This book was released on 2021-01-30 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A colorful history of visual signalling methods used at sea, from AD 900 to today. What Ship, Where Bound? takes its title from the familiar opening exchange of signals between passing ships, and celebrates the long history of visual communications at sea. It traces the visual language of signalling from the earliest naval banners or streamers used by the Byzantines in AD 900 through to morse signalling still used at sea today. The three sections, Flag Signalling, Semaphore, and Light Signalling each trace the development of the respective methods in meeting the needs of commanders for secure and unambiguous communication with their fleets. Though inextricably linked to naval tactics and fleet manoeuvres, the history of signalling at sea also reflects the exponential growth in global maritime trade in the nineteenth century when dozens of competing systems vied for the attention of ship owners and led to a huge proliferation of codes. By setting each method in the context of its time, the book explores their practical use, successes and shortcomings and, particularly in the case of signal flags – though by no means exclusively so – their place in our visual, cultural and maritime heritage. Covering a wide spectrum of visual signalling methods from false fire, through shapes, furled sails and coloured flags to experiments in high speed text messaging by signal lamp, the book also examines the complex interrelation between all three methods under battle conditions. A detailed analysis of visual signal exchanges before and during the Battle of Jutland reveals both the success and ultimate limitations on flag signalling at the limits of visibility. Extensively and beautifully illustrated, the book will appeal to present and former mariners familiar with the signals, all those with an interest in naval and maritime history, with particular emphasis on late eighteenth-century signalling practice, artists and ship modellers, graphic designers and all those involved in visual communications today. “A brief but colorful history of the signaling at sea and ashore, with much emphasis on the use of flags, semaphore, and telegraph in the age of sail, and how these have evolved through the ages. . . . A fascinating addition to the literature of the sea.” —Warships: International Fleet Review