Download or read book Royal Australian Navy 1939 1942 written by G. Hermon Gill and published by Canberra : Australian War Memorial. This book was released on 1957 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book War in the Pacific written by Peter Harmsen and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-05-01 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: War in the Pacific is a trilogy of books comprising a general history of the war against Japan; unlike other histories it expands the narrative beginning long before Pearl Harbor and encompasses a much wider group of actors to produce the most complete narrative yet written and the first truly international treatment of the epic conflict. War in the Pacific: Formidable Foe – 1942-1943 Details the astonishing transformation that took place from 1942 to 1943, setting the Allies on a path to final victory against Japan. The central importance of China is highlighted in a way that no previous general history of the war against Japan has achieved.

Download or read book The Man Who Took the Rap written by Peter John Dye and published by Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2018-10-15 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first biography of Sir Robert Brooke-Popham, a key figure in the early development of airpower, whose significant and varied achievements have been overlooked because of his subsequent involvement in the fall of Singapore. It highlights Brooke-Popham’s role in developing the first modern military logistic system, the creation of the Royal Air Force Staff College and the organizational arrangements that underpinned Fighter Command’s success in the Battle of Britain. Peter Dye challenges longstanding views about performance as Commander-in-Chief Far East and, based on new evidence, offers a more nuanced narrative that sheds light on British and Allied preparations for the Pacific War, inter-service relations and the reasons for the disastrous loss of air and naval superiority that followed the Japanese attack. “The Man Who Took the Rap” highlights the misguided attempts at deterrence, in the absence of a coordinated information campaign, and the unprecedented security lapse that betrayed the parlous state of the Allied defenses.

Download or read book Shadows on the Track written by Jan McLeod and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-01-05 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At Templeton’s Crossing in October 1942, Private Nick Kennedy paused to write in his diary: ‘One wonders why all this strife should be … these men in the prime of their life cut down like flowers’. As a young nursing orderly serving with the 2/4th Australian Field Ambulance, Kennedy was unenviably well-placed to reflect on the futility of war. The Australian Army was woefully unprepared to fight a medical war in Papua and the soldiers paid the price. Almost 30,000 soldiers suffered from illness and tropical diseases, and an estimated 6000 were killed or wounded during the six-month campaign. These statistics have traditionally been represented as unavoidable consequences of fighting a war in a place such as Papua. This book disputes that narrative. Death and disease were inevitable outcomes, but the scale of the suffering was not. The medical challenges presented in Papua were extreme – they were not insurmountable. Shadows on the Track considers a wide range of issues that impacted on the health of the Australian soldiers before, during and after the Papuan campaign was fought and won. The strengths, successes, shortcomings and failures of the medical campaign are identified, analysed and evaluated. The focus on the front-line medical personnel – the men of the field ambulance units – brings a new perspective to the battles of the Kokoda Track, Milne Bay and the Beachheads. Shining a light on these Australians who tended the sick, mended the wounded and buried the dead in Papua makes stepping out of the shadows a little easier.

Download or read book The First South Pacific Campaign written by John B Lundstrom and published by Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2014-04-15 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On May 7 and 8, 1942, fast carrier task forces from the United States and Imperial Japanese met in combat for the first time in the Battle of the Coral Sea. A strategic victory for the U.S. despite the loss of the carrier Lexington, the battle blunted the Japanese drive on Port Moresby, a valuable Allied air base on the island of New Guinea. Lundstrom offers a detailed analysis of the fundamental strategies employed by Japan and the U.S. in the South Pacific from January to June 1942, the efforts of Adm. Ernest J. King to reinforce the area in spite of Roosevelt’s Europe First grand strategy and Adm.Chester Nimitz's aggressive plans to fight in the Coral Sea. Now in paperback, The First Pacific Campaign provides a superb overview of the crucial first six months of the naval war in the South Pacific.

Download or read book American Amphibious Gunboats in World War II written by Robin L. Rielly and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2013-05-13 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the United States began its campaign against numerous Japanese-held islands in the Pacific, Japanese tactics required them to develop new weapons and strategies. One of the most crucial to the island assaults was a new group of amphibious gunboats that could deliver heavy fire close in to shore as American forces landed. These gunboats were also to prove important in the interdiction of inter-island barge traffic and, late in the war, the kamikaze threat. Several variations of these gunboats were developed, based on the troop carrying LCI(L). They included three conversions of the LCI(L), with various combinations of guns, rockets and mortars, and a fourth gunboat, the LCS(L), based on the same hull but designed as a weapons platform from the beginning. By the end of the war the amphibious gunboats had proven their worth.

Download or read book Empires in the Balance written by H. P Willmott and published by Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2008-09-01 with total page 490 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The respected British military historian H. P. Willmott presents the first of a three-volume appraisal of the strategic policies of the countries involved in the Pacific War. Remarkable in its scope and depth of research, his thoughtful analysis covers the whole range of political, economic, military, and naval activity in the Pacific. This first volume comprehensively covers events between December 1941 and April 1942, concluding with the Doolittle Raid on April 18. When published in hardcover in 1982, the book was hailed as an eloquent portrayal of great empires on trial that no one should miss. Willmott’s stimulating and original approach to the subject remains unmatched even today.

Download or read book MacArthur s Coalition written by Peter J. Dean and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From 1942–1945 the Allies’ war in the Southwest Pacific was effectively a bilateral coalition between the United States and Australia under the command of General Douglas MacArthur. By charting the evolution of the military effectiveness of the US-Australian alliance, MacArthur’s Coalition puts the relationship between the United States and Australia at the center of the war against Japan. Drawing on new primary source material, Peter J. Dean has written the first substantial book-length treatment of the coalition as a combined military force. This expansive and ambitious book provides a fresh perspective on the Pacific War by providing a close-up, in-depth account of operations in the Southwest Pacific from the Kokoda Trail campaign to the reconquest of the Philippines and Borneo. Dean’s work takes the reader deep into the key military headquarters in the Southwest Pacific and reveals the discussions, debates, and arguments between key commanders and staff officers during the course of planning and waging a monumental conflict. Drawing upon archival records across three continents, Dean brings the qualities of these senior officers to life by exploring the critical importance of personalities and leadership in overcoming cultural, doctrinal, and organizational divides in the largely unequal alliance. Set against the practicalities of fighting a fanatical enemy in some of the most inhospitable terrain in the war, his book shows how, despite these divides and MacArthur’s difficult personality, the US-Australian coalition was able to forge a highly effective and ultimately triumphant fighting machine. With its unprecedented view of the joint nature of operations in the Southwest Pacific and its focus on frontline commanders and units in forging a successful fighting force, MacArthur’s Coalition illuminates a critical aspect of the Allied victory in World War II.

Download or read book To Salamaua written by Phillip Bradley and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-07-29 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following on from his acclaimed book, The Battle for Wau, Phillip Bradley turns his attention to the Salamaua campaign - the first of the New Guinea offensives by the Australian Army in the Second World War. Opening with the pivotal air-sea battle of the Bismarck Sea, this important title recounts the fierce land campaign that was fought for the ridges that guarded the Japanese base at Salamaua. From Mount Tambu to Old Vickers and across the Francisco River, the Australians and their American allies fought a desperate struggle to keep the Imperial Japanese Army diverted from the strategic prize of Lae. To Salamaua covers the entire campaign in one volume for the first time. From the strategic background of the campaign and the heated conflicts, to the mud and blood of the front lines, this is the extraordinary story.

Download or read book Tower of Skulls A History of the Asia Pacific War July 1937 May 1942 written by Richard B. Frank and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2020-03-03 with total page 1107 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A sweeping epic.… Promises to do for the war in the Pacific what Rick Atkinson did for Europe." —James M. Scott, author of Rampage In 1937, the swath of the globe east from India to the Pacific Ocean encompassed half the world’s population. Japan’s onslaught into China that year unleashed a tidal wave of events that fundamentally transformed this region and killed about twenty-five million people. This extraordinary World War II narrative vividly portrays the battles across this entire region and links those struggles on many levels with their profound twenty-first-century legacies. In this first volume of a trilogy, award-winning historian Richard B. Frank draws on rich archival research and recently discovered documentary evidence to tell an epic story that gave birth to the world we live in now.

Download or read book P 40E Warhawk vs A6M2 Zero sen written by Peter Ingman and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-06-25 with total page 81 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The P-40E Warhawk is often viewed as one of the less successful American fighter designs of World War II, but in 1942 the aircraft was all that was available to the USAAC in-theatre. Units equipped with the aircraft were duly forced into combat against the deadly A6M2 Zero-sen, which had already earned itself a near-mythical reputation following its exploits over China and Pearl Harbor. During an eight-month period in 1942, an extended air campaign was fought out between the two fighters for air superiority over the Javanese and then northern Australian skies. During this time, the P-40Es and the Zero-sens regularly clashed without interference from other fighter types. In respect to losses, the Japanese 'won' these engagements, for many more P-40Es were shot down than Zero-sens. However, the American Warhawks provided a potent deterrent that forced the IJNAF to attack from high altitudes, where crews' bombing efficiency was much poorer. Fully illustrated throughout, and supported by rare and previously unpublished photographs, this book draws on both American and Japanese sources to tell the full story of the clashes between these iconic two fighters in Darwin and the East Indies.

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 with total page 793 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Craig L. Symonds' World War II at Sea offers a definitive naval history of the Second World War presenting the chronology of the naval war, from The London Conference of 1930 to the surrender in Tokyo Bay in 1945, on a global scale for the first time.

Download or read book Australia s War 1939 45 written by Joan Beaumont and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-09-10 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Second World War was a dominant experience in Australian history. For the first time the country faced the threat of invasion. The economy and society were mobilised to an unprecedented degree, with 550 000 men and women, or one in twelve of a population of over 7 million, serving in the armed forces overseas. Social patterns and family life were disrupted. Politically, the war gave a new legitimacy to the Australian Labor Party which had been confined to the wilderness of the Opposition at the Federal level for most of the inter-war years. The powers of the Federal government increased and a new momentum for social reform was generated at the popular and governmental level. In the international sphere, the war fundamentally shook Australian confidence in the power on which it had relied for generations, Great Britain. It generated a sense of independence in Australian foreign policy and initiated a new, if halting and problematic, realignment towards the United States. In this accessible book Joan Beaumont, Kate Darian-Smith, David Lee, David Lowe, Marnie Haig-Muir, Roy Hay and David Walker consider the range of Australia's experience of this conflict. In a single volume they draw together the many aspects of the war and distil the current state of historical scholarship. Australia's War 1939-45 will be invaluable to tertiary students and of enormous interest to the reader concerned with the social, political and military history of Australia. A companion volume on the First World War is also available.

Download or read book World War II in Europe Africa and the Americas with General Sources written by Loyd Lee and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 1997-08-21 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A broadly interdisciplinary work, this handbook discusses the best and most enduring literature related to the major topics and themes of World War II. Military historiography is treated in essays on the major theaters of military operations and the related themes of logistics and intelligence, while political and diplomatic history is covered in chapters on international relations, resistance movements, and collaboration. The volume analyzes themes of domestic history in essays on economic mobilization, the home fronts, and women in the military and civilian life. The book also covers the Holocaust. This handbook approaches each topic from a global viewpoint rather than focusing on individual national communities. Except for nonprint material, the literature, research, and sources surveyed are primarily those available in English. The volume is aimed at both experts on the war and the general academic community and will also be useful to students and serious laymen interested in the war.

Download or read book The North African Air Campaign written by Christopher M. Rein and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2012-11-30 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the summer of 1942, Axis forces controlled almost the entire southern shore of the Mediterranean. Less than a year later, they had been swept from the African continent-thanks in no small part to efforts of the fledgling U.S. Army Air Force. Indeed, USAAF in North Africa emerged as a senior partner in the Alliance, supplying aircraft and crews at a rate the other partners were unable to match. Going beyond the spare analysis of North African air operations in previous accounts, Christopher Rein shows how American fighter planes and heavy bombers, employed in almost exclusively tactical and operational roles, played a pivotal role in the Alliance's successful ground campaigns. This aerial armada also had a significant negative impact on enemy logistics through its bombing raids on Axis ports, shipping, and airfields. In the process, USAAF helped foster and develop a pattern of inter-service cooperation that remains at the foundation of American close-air-support doctrine today. Rein chronicles the emergence of USAAF in the late interwar and early WWII periods as a more heterogeneous and creative fighting force than earlier works have led us to believe. He then analyzes little-known aspects of the war, including early air operations in the eastern Mediterranean and in the TORCH landings. He explores some of the key issues confronting Eisenhower, such as how to establish USAAF priorities and how to deploy long-range bombers, fighters, and attack forces. In describing the struggle for balance in the employment of air assets between strategic bombing and interdiction in a time fraught with inter-service rivalry, he shows how, despite occasional mistakes such as the heavy losses involved in the Ploesti raids, USAAF struck a suitable balance and even invested more assets in interdiction than traditional accounts of strategic bombardment would suggest. A virtual operational-level history of the USAAF during the formative period of American airpower, Rein's account pulls together material from diverse sources to demonstrate that today's Air Force emphasis on mobility, intelligence, reconnaissance, and close support for ground forces have deep roots. By showing that the Army Air Force in World War II did not neglect support for ground and naval forces in order to concentrate exclusively on strategic bombing, it suggests lessons for military and civilian leaders in the employment of air forces in current and future conflicts.

Download or read book Greece February to April 1941 written by Michael Tyquin and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-03-02 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As with the failed attempt to seize the Gallipoli peninsula in 1915, the allied campaign to assist Greece against a seemingly invincible German juggernaut was poorly conceived and probably doomed even as plans were made to assist that country. Like any campaign, however, it holds lessons for the contemporary student of strategy, tactics and history. Greece presented singular geographic difficulties for the defending forces, its mountainous defiles dictating the distribution of ports, road and rail routes. The primitive state of the national infrastructure did little to help a long-term defensive posture. Operations in Greece proved to be a nightmare, particularly for logistics units, which struggled with primitive communication systems in rugged terrain over which the enemy enjoyed total air superiority. Poor liaison between the Greek and Commonwealth forces did not help matters, nor was the force deployed adequate for its task. The allies never enjoyed air superiority, nor could they consolidate any in-depth defence in time to be effective. The official British history of the campaign stated that the ‘British campaign on the mainland of Greece was from start to finish a withdrawal’. Greece: February to April 1941 explores these complexities, and mistakes through the eyes of the Australian Army Medical Corps.

Download or read book The Routledge History of the Second World War written by Paul R. Bartrop and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-11-08 with total page 866 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge History of the Second World War sums up the latest trends in the scholarship of that conflict, covering a range of major themes and issues. The book delivers a thematic analysis of the many ways in which study of the Second World War can take place, considering international, transnational, and global approaches, and serves as a major jumping off point for further research into the specific fields covered by each of the expert authors. It demonstrates the global and total nature of the Second World War, giving due coverage to the conflict in all major theatres and through the lens of the key combatants and neutrals, examines issues of race, gender, ideology, and society during the war, and functions as a textbook to educate students as to the trends that have taken place in how the conflict has been (and can be) interpreted in the modern world. Divided into twelve parts that cover central themes of the conflict, including theatres of war, leadership, societies, occupation, secrecy and legacies, it enables those with no memory of war to approach it with a view to comprehending what it was all about and places the history of this conflict into a context that is international, transnational, and institutional. This is a comprehensive and accessible reference volume for anyone interested in the most up to date scholarship on this major conflict. Chapter 18 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com