1992 marked the 500th anniversary of the European discovery of the Americas by Christopher Columbus. The details of Columbus's ships - the Santa Maria, Nina and Pinta - remain lost to historians, for the ships were built before the first manuals of shipbuilding were written, and no documentation or illustration has survived. Nevertheless, extensive research has allowed the construction of a number of replicas over the years, and those built in Spain in 1892 and 1927 are regarded as among the most realistic. The new replicas built for the 1992 celebrations are without doubt the most accurate r...

At 21 minutes to eight in the evening of 3 September 1939, the SS Athenia, outward bound from Liverpool to Montreal with 1400 passengers, was struck by a torpedo. This was the first attack in the Second World War to be made by the German Navy, and the torpedo was fired by U30, a Type VII U-boat, commissioned in 1936. On 10 July 1945, the British steam fishing boat Kned was sunk by mine off Lizard Head, in a minefield laid in August 1944 by U 218, a VIID U-boat, commissioned in 1942. Thus the German naval war began and ended in submarine action. Despite the operations carried out by the more gl...

The name Fairmile is justly famous for the company's various Coastal Force motor launches and other types used by the Royal and Commonwealth navies (as well as those nations with navies in exile) during the Second World War. The Fairmile 'B' was built in very large numbers, both in the UK and abroad, and later 'D's are well known for being the most heavily armed craft for their size of that period - but how did that vast organisation come into being? This is a small part of that story and the process that brought the 'D' into existence. During the First World War the success of German s...

Neubaufahrzeug, Luchs, Flammpanzer, Tauchpanzer, Krokodil, Leopard, Lowe, Bar, and Many Other Experimental Vehicles and Armored Projects.

Publications concerning German tanks usually dwell on the types used by the Wehrmacht in World War II, the Panther and Tiger, as well as Panzer III and IV, or they offer a present-day technical evaluation of the Leopard 1 or Leopard 2. The activities of German tanks in World War I and the technical beginnings of early German tanks are touched on only marginally. This book covers the earliest forms of German armored fighting vehicles used primarily in WWI.

When Japan opened hostilities against the Western Powers in December 1941, she was in no position to sustain a long war or to gain an outright victory over her opponents. Her productive capacity was far smaller than theirs. She had never been rich in raw materials. Her oil reserves, after reaching a peak at the end of the 1930s, had begun to fall off as a result of increased consumption and restrictions imposed by her suppliers. Her merchant fleet barely sulliced for peacetime needs. Her army was well trained and well equipped, hut forty of its fifty-one divisions were committed to a wearisome...

The subject of this book is a Flower class corvette built in Vancouver and commissioned in January 1941. Agassiz (pronounced Aga-see) in her as-built, short forecastle configuration differed considerably from the com­mon conception of the long-forecastle 'Flower', such as the museum ship I1MCS Sackville in Halifax, Nova Scotia, or the Greek corvette Kriezis (ex-Coreopsis) which represented HMS Compass Rose in the film The Cruel Sea, or 1/72 scale models from the popular Matchbox/Revell kit. It was, however, the short-forecastle configuration that was in the mind's eye of Nicholas Monsarrat ...

This book is about naval combat in the late 1980s and the next decade. Designed to give the reader both an overview of the subject and a detailed description of weapons, equipment and tactics in one comprehensive volume, it ranges in scope from the recently refurbished World War II battleships of the US Navy, through aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers and frigates, to the increasingly important but still little understood world of the submarine, and places them all in their tactical and technological context. Unseen and unheeded by the majority of laymen, and generally unpublicised by the...

Conceived in the mid-1930s in a welter of con­flicting demands - somewhat nebulous operational requirements playing second fiddle to limitations im­posed by Naval Disarmament Treaties - the T-class submarine nevertheless evolved just in time to bear the full brunt of war and to take a (if not THE) major part in the very significant role played by British sub­marines during the Second World War, especially in Home Waters and in the Mediterranean. Many will consider they proved to be a highly successful design for these theatres: formidably armed, versatile, of adequate endurance, capable of wit...

Features 300 of the world's most important biplanes, triplanes and seaplanes, each one illustrated with a detail colour drawing, plus full specification and details of armaments, and a full development and operational history. A great history of these very special aircraft, from the AEG C. IV to the Zeppelin-Staaken R.
Each aircraft is illustrated by full colour art work, with accompanying text and a detailed specifications table. Types used in the major wars of the 20th century are listed, including the Sopwith Camel and the Red inter-war civil aircraft.