Download or read book The Sea and the Second World War written by Marcus Faulkner and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2019-12-10 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The sea shaped the course and conduct of World War II, from the first moments of the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, to the Japanese surrender on September 2, 1945. The impact could be felt far beyond the shoreline, as the arms and armies carried across the oceans were ultimately destined to wage war ashore. Populations and industries depended on the raw materials and supplies in a war that increasingly became a contest of national will and economic might. Ultimately, it was the war at sea that linked numerous regional conflicts and theaters of operation into a global war. As the war grew in complexity and covered an increasingly larger geographical area, the organization of the maritime effort and the impact it had on the formulation of national strategy also evolved. This volume illustrates the impact of naval operations on the Second World War by highlighting topics previously neglected in the scholarship. In doing so, it provides new insights into political, strategic, administrative, and operational aspects of the maritime dimension of the war.
Download or read book America s Fighting Admirals written by William Tuohy and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American naval actions of World War II comprise the most widespread, complex, and dramatic battles in the history of sea warfare. The fighting took place over vast distances in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, as well as in the constricted spaces of the Mediterranean and Solomon seas. Each of the major actions had an admiral, the commander in charge, who led the battle. In combat, the abilities and determination of these commanders at sea were put to the most severe test. Americas Fighting Admirals describes the course of U.S. sea action in World War II. It examines the skills, strengths, weaknesses and personalities of the American admirals who fought the battles at sea. It examines the effect that stress, tension, and responsibility have on commanders making vital decisions in the red-hot crucible of battle. And it reveals the changing nature of the responsibilities of flag officers as the war progressed and became enormously complex.
Download or read book How the War Was Won written by Phillips Payson O'Brien and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-02-12 with total page 655 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An important new history of air and sea power in World War II and its decisive role in Allied victory.
Download or read book The War for the Seas written by Evan Mawdsley and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-24 with total page 633 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bold and authoritative maritime history of World War II which takes a fully international perspective and challenges our existing understanding Command of the oceans was crucial to winning World War II. By the start of 1942 Nazi Germany had conquered mainland Europe, and Imperial Japan had overrun Southeast Asia and much of the Pacific. How could Britain and distant America prevail in what had become a "war of continents"? In this definitive account, Evan Mawdsley traces events at sea from the first U-boat operations in 1939 to the surrender of Japan. He argues that the Allied counterattack involved not just decisive sea battles, but a long struggle to control shipping arteries and move armies across the sea. Covering all the major actions in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, as well as those in the narrow seas, this book interweaves for the first time the endeavors of the maritime forces of the British Empire, the United States, Germany, and Japan, as well as those of France, Italy, and Russia.
Download or read book World War II at Sea written by Craig L. Symonds and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-02 with total page 793 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Author of Lincoln and His Admirals (winner of the Lincoln Prize), The Battle of Midway (Best Book of the Year, Military History Quarterly), and Operation Neptune, (winner of the Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature), Craig L. Symonds has established himself as one of the finest naval historians at work today. World War II at Sea represents his crowning achievement: a complete narrative of the naval war and all of its belligerents, on all of the world's oceans and seas, between 1939 and 1945. Opening with the 1930 London Conference, Symonds shows how any limitations on naval warfare would become irrelevant before the decade was up, as Europe erupted into conflict once more and its navies were brought to bear against each other. World War II at Sea offers a global perspective, focusing on the major engagements and personalities and revealing both their scale and their interconnection: the U-boat attack on Scapa Flow and the Battle of the Atlantic; the "miracle" evacuation from Dunkirk and the pitched battles for control of Norway fjords; Mussolini's Regia Marina-at the start of the war the fourth-largest navy in the world-and the dominance of the Kidö Butai and Japanese naval power in the Pacific; Pearl Harbor then Midway; the struggles of the Russian Navy and the scuttling of the French Fleet in Toulon in 1942; the landings in North Africa and then Normandy. Here as well are the notable naval leaders-FDR and Churchill, both self-proclaimed "Navy men," Karl Dönitz, François Darlan, Ernest King, Isoroku Yamamoto, Erich Raeder, Inigo Campioni, Louis Mountbatten, William Halsey, as well as the hundreds of thousands of seamen and officers of all nationalities whose live were imperiled and lost during the greatest naval conflicts in history, from small-scale assaults and amphibious operations to the largest armadas ever assembled. Many have argued that World War II was dominated by naval operations; few have shown and how and why this was the case. Symonds combines precision with story-telling verve, expertly illuminating not only the mechanics of large-scale warfare on (and below) the sea but offering wisdom into the nature of the war itself.
Download or read book World War II written by Christopher Chant and published by . This book was released on 1977 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Air War at Sea in the Second World War written by Martin W Bowman and published by Pen and Sword Aviation. This book was released on 2023-06-30 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Martin Bowmanâs considerable experience as a military historian has spanned over forty years, during which time he has spent hundreds of hours interviewing and corresponding with numerous men and women and their relatives, in Britain, America and beyond, resulting in a wealth of material on the war at sea from World War One to the Falklands and the wars on terror. All these narratives have been woven into a highly readable and emotional outpouring of life and death in action in all his titles, as here, in World War Two, where the men of the Fleet Air Arm and the US Navy fighter (operating bomber and torpedo carrying aircraft) describe the compelling, gripping and thought-provoking narrative of the air war in the freezing Atlantic wastes to the waters of the mighty Pacific.
Download or read book War at Sea 1939 1945 written by John Hamilton and published by Blandford. This book was released on 1986 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The RAF Air Sea Rescue Service in the Second World War written by Norman Franks and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2016-11-30 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the Second World War began in 1939 it was thought that it would be fought along the same lines as the First World War, with the Allied air forces operating from both Britain and France. With the fall of Britains Northern European Allies in May 1940, all that changed. From then onwards, RAF aircraft operating over enemy and enemy-held territory necessitated flights across both the North Sea and the English Channel. This meant that aircrew in difficulties would be forced to come down in both of these bodies of water. Therefore it was essential that some form of rescue service be made available to fish these airman from the water. But there were no aircraft in existence at that time that were designed for such a task: initially all that could be done was to use land planes to help locate anyone in the water, drop a dinghy to them, and then guide a boat to their position. Obviously a quicker and more reliable means of rescue was needed, and this came in the shape of the Supermarine Walrus, an amphibian airplane that could land on both sea and land. Several Flights of these airplanes were set up around the coast of Britain, concentrated mainly around the south and southeast of England. The Air Sea Rescue airmen did a magnificent job from 1941-45, rescuing hundreds of downed RAF and USAAF aircrew. It took a special type of airman to undertake these rescues and another kind of courage. As the war in North Africa developed, Walrus aircraft were needed in the Mediterranean, and later on either side of the Italian coast. Walrus squadrons operated just as successfully in this theater as around Britain. Aircrew operating over any stretch of water could always count on the ASR boys coming to their aid. This is their story.
Download or read book War at Sea written by Nathan Miller and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1997 with total page 614 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the sinking of the British passenger liner Athenia on September 3, 1939, by a German U-boat (against orders) to the Japanese surrender on board the Missouri on September 2, 1945, War at Sea covers every major naveal battle of World War II. "A first-rate work and the best history of its kind yet written".--Vice Admiral William P. Mack, U.S.N. (Ret.). 30 photos.
Download or read book Naval Aviation in the Second World War written by Philip Kaplan and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2013-10-30 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first aircraft carriers made their appearance in the early years of World War I. These first flattops were improvised affairs built on hulls that had been laid down with other purposes in mind, and it was not until the 1920s that the first purpose-built carriers were launched, but no-one was as yet clear about the role of the carriers and they were largely unloved by the 'battleship admirals' who still believed that their great dreadnoughts were the ultimate capital ships.World War II changed all that, At Taranto, Pearl Harbour, and in the North Atlantic, the carrier, the ugly duckling of the world's navies, proved itself to be the dreadnought nemesis. As the tide of war turned, the fast attack carriers of the U.S. Navy spearheaded the counter-attack in the Pacific while the makeshift escort carriers helped to seal the fate of the German U-boats in the Atlantic. The carrier, and naval aviation, thus emerged into the post-war world as the primary symbol and instrument of seapower; it would play a crucial role in the strategic encirclement of the Soviet Union and enabled western airpower to be rapidly and effectively deployed in areas of conflict as remote as Korea, Vietnam, the Falklands and the Gulf.Kaplan describes the adventure of the young American, British, and Japanese naval aviators in the Second World War. It is an account of their experiences based on archives, diaries, published and unpublished memoirs, and personal interviews with veteran naval airmen of WWII, providing a vivid and often hair-raising picture of the dangers they encountered in combat and of everyday life aboard an aircraft carrier. It considers some of the key aspects of the WWII naval aviator's combat career, such as why it was that only a tiny minority of these pilots those in whom the desire for aerial combat overrode everything accounted for such a large proportion of the victories.In the major carrier actions of that conflict, from the Royal Navy's attack on Taranto which crippled the Italian fleet in 1940, to the Japanese carrier-launched surprise attack on U.S. Navy battleships and facilities at Pearl Harbour in 1941, to the carrier battle of Midway in 1942, and the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot of 1944, through the Japanese Kamikaze campaign against the U.S. Carriers in the final stages of the Pacific war, this book takes the reader back to one of the most exciting and significant times in modern history.
Download or read book At War at Sea written by Ronald H. Spector and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2002-04-30 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beginning with a gripping account of one of the most decisive naval battles in history-the 1905 battle of Tsushima between the Japanese and Russians-and ending with the sophisticated missile engagements of the Falklands and in the Persian Gulf, naval historian Ronald Spector explores every facet of the past one hundred years of naval warfare. Drawing from more than one hundred diaries, memoirs, letters, and interviews, this is, above all, a masterful narrative of the human side of combat at sea-real stories told from the point of view of the sailors who experienced it. Exhaustively researched and fascinating in detail, At War at Sea is a monumental history of the men, the ships, and the battles fought on the high seas. "Superb . . . Spector's account provides evocative and fresh perspectives on cultures, technologies and innovations that influenced sailors' lives and shaped naval warfare." (The San Diego Union-Tribune) "Monumental . . . Many books have recorded the history of the United States Navy, but few have meshed that history with that of all other major navies-an unusual comparative technique that brings into often startling relief the virtues and flaws of our own navy." (The Washington Post)"
Download or read book The Second World Wars written by Victor Davis Hanson and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2017-10-17 with total page 775 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A "breathtakingly magisterial" account of World War II by America's preeminent military historian (Wall Street Journal) World War II was the most lethal conflict in human history. Never before had a war been fought on so many diverse landscapes and in so many different ways, from rocket attacks in London to jungle fighting in Burma to armor strikes in Libya. The Second World Wars examines how combat unfolded in the air, at sea, and on land to show how distinct conflicts among disparate combatants coalesced into one interconnected global war. Drawing on 3,000 years of military history, bestselling author Victor Davis Hanson argues that despite its novel industrial barbarity, neither the war's origins nor its geography were unusual. Nor was its ultimate outcome surprising. The Axis powers were well prepared to win limited border conflicts, but once they blundered into global war, they had no hope of victory. An authoritative new history of astonishing breadth, The Second World Wars offers a stunning reinterpretation of history's deadliest conflict.
Download or read book Northern European Overture to War 1939 1941 written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2013-05-24 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 was a pivotal moment in European history and precipitated the outbreak of the Second World War western historiography has largely neglected Northern Europe. Two questions dominated the course of events, the Anglo-German contest for control of the access to the Atlantic Ocean and the Soviet-German contest for control of their former territories as a precursor to the future Total War they expected to wage against each other. This anthology of 23 essays considers both these issues collectively and provides a new international perspective on the region’s transition from the relative peace of the interwar era to the all out war following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Contributors are Azar Gat, Michael Epkenhans, Andrew Lambert, Tom Kristiansen, Rolf Hobson, Gunnar Åselius, Jörg Hillmann, Werner Rahn, Sławomir Dębski, Ole Kristian Grimnes, Česlovas Laurinavičius, Alfred Erich Senn, Lars Ericson Wolke, Karl Erik Haug, Boris Vadimovich Sokolov, Toomas Hiio, Magnus Ilmjärv, Palle Roslyng-Jensen ,Hans Christian Bjerg, Valters Ščerbinskis, Michael H. Clemmesen, and Marcus Faulkner.
Download or read book Fighters Over the Fleet written by Norman Friedman and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2016-10-30 with total page 1247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A tactical and technical history of the development of British, American, and Japanese naval air defense from the 1920s to the 1980s. This is an account of the evolution of naval fighters for fleet air defense and the parallel evolution of the ships operating and controlling them, concentrating on the three main exponents of carrier warfare: the British Royal Navy, the U.S. Navy, and the Imperial Japanese Navy. It describes the earliest efforts from the 1920s, but it was not until radar allowed the direction of fighters that organized air defense became possible. Thus, major naval-air battles of the Second World War like Midway, the Pedestal convoy, the Philippine Sea, and Okinawa are portrayed as tests of the new technology. This was ultimately found wanting by the Kamikaze campaigns, leading to postwar moves towards computer control and new kinds of fighters. After 1945 the threats of nuclear weapons and standoff missiles compounded the difficulties of naval air defense. The second half of the book covers R.N. and U.S.N. attempts to solve these problems, looking at the American experience in Vietnam and British operations in the Falklands War. It concludes with the ultimate U.S. development of techniques and technology to fight the Outer Air Battle in the 1980s, which in turn point to the current state of carrier fighters and the supporting technology. Based largely on documentary sources, some previously unused, this book will appeal to both the naval and aviation communities. “Fighters Over the Fleet provides more information about fleet air defense than any other work currently available. It is recommended for specialist as well aviation-minded readers.” —Naval Historical Foundation
Download or read book War Beneath the Sea written by Peter Padfield and published by Wiley. This book was released on 1998-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading naval and military historian presents the first book to cover the major submarine campaigns in all the WWII theaters. Vividly recreates the experience of submarine and anti-submarine warfare from the decision makers in the war offices to the men in the boats. Describes the disappointing performance of the giant Japanese submarines in the Pacific and the narrow margin by which Britain escaped defeat by German U-boats in the Battle of the Atlantic. Reveals new information about the capture of the Enigma cipher machine, harrowing accounts of defenseless warriors shot in the water and much more. Contains 16 pages of photographs, many published for the first time.
Download or read book Air War Over the Nore written by Jon Sutherland and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2010-06-15 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Battle of Britain and the Atlantic and the Blitz are invariably the focus of books and perceptions of the air war over and around Britain during the Second World War. Yet, it was Britains more exposed eastern flank, from the South Foreland in the south to Bridlington in the north that faced nearly six years of unrelenting attacks by the Luftwaffe, the Kriegsmarine and, amazingly, the Corpo Aereo Italiano based in Belgium. The Italians alone launched some 150 raids on England hitting Great Yarmouth, Clacton, Harwich, Deal, Ramsgate and a host of other targets.This book chronicles the air war around the east coast as its principle focus but also incorporate the joint operations mounted by both the Allies and the Axis forces. It looks at the preparations for invasion, the defense of vital convoys, the air defenses, the coastal blitz, ship and crew rescue and crucial docks and shipyards. With so much attention paid to the south coast, the air war over the east coast was often fought on a shoestring although it was the coast that lay closest to Germany. It was not a war of vast fleets of warships and submarines, it was conflict staged by aircraft and smaller raiding craft. It also saw the biggest mine-laying campaign in history and the largest battle fought between Axis E Boats and Allied Motor Torpedo Boats. As the tide turned in Britains favor, the east coast became the staging post of the great bomber offensives against enemy occupied Europe and Germany itself. Yet the raiding and attacks on the east coast continued culminating in air-launched V1 attacks and finally V2 strikes.
