Showing titles in Armed Forces

On 25 December 1943, the German battlecruiser Scharnhorst slipped out Altenfjord in Norway to attack Arctic convoy JW55B which was carrying vital war supplies to the Soviet Union. But British naval intelligence knew of the Scharnhorst's mission before she sailed and the vulnerable convoy was protected by a large Royal Naval force, including the battleship Duke of York. In effect the Scharnhorst was sailing into a trap. One of the most compelling naval dramas of the Second World War had begun.

Tornado Boys is the latest in the ever-popular Boys series and differs from earlier titles. With the introduction of female pilots to the RAF in 1994, the Tornado was the first aircraft to be flown by both men and women. This is acknowledged in the book with a chapter written by one female pilot. Another aspect that makes this book different from the rest of the series is that it covers an aircraft which is still in active service, especially as a key player in current Middle East operations.

In the evolving landscape of modern warfare, where the enemy may not wear a uniform and the battlefield may be a city street, surveillance has become not just important, but indispensable. At the heart of Britain’s response to this new reality stands one of its most elusive and misunderstood special forces units: the Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR). In The SRR: Britain’s Covert Surveillance Regiment, former military intelligence officer and historian Mick Trenlow-Symes pulls back the curtain—if only slightly—on this shadowy arm of UK Special Forces.

Midway is the most famous naval battle of the Pacific War, and one of the most mythologized. The traditional view of the battle, popularized in its immediate aftermath and surviving through to the present day, is of a heavily outnumbered American force snatching victory in the face of overwhelming odds. This view is simplistic and, in many respects, wrong. Pacific War expert Mark Stille provides a detailed analysis of this pivotal battle, and argues that Midway was neither a miraculous American victory, nor a product of good fortune.

Following the disastrous Java Sea campaign, the Allies went on the offensive in the Pacific in a desperate attempt to halt the Japanese forces that were rampaging across the region. With the conquest of Australia a very real possibility, the stakes were high. Their target: the Japanese-held Soloman Islands, in particular the southern island of Guadalcanal. Hamstrung by arcane pre-war thinking and a bureaucratic mind-set, the US Navy had to adapt on the fly in order to compete with the mighty Imperial Japanese Navy, whose ingenuity had fostered the creation of its Pacific empire.

Jasper Maskelyne was a world famous magician and illusionist in the 1930s. When war broke out, he volunteered his services to the British Army and was sent to Egypt when the desert war began. Here, he used his unique skills to save the vital port of Alexandria from German bombers and to 'hide' the Suez Canal from them. He invented all sorts of camouflage methods to make trucks look like tanks and vice versa. On Malta he developed 'the world's first portable holes': fake bomb craters used to fool the Germans into thinking they had hit their targets.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The extraordinary true story of the World War II air, land, and sea campaign that brought the U.S. Navy to the apex of its strength and marked the rise of the United States as a global superpower, from the acclaimed author of The Last Stand of the Tin Can...

An elite Navy SEAL Team 6 operator trained to kill the United States’ most dangerous enemies takes readers inside the unadulterated, morally complicated and riveting post-military adventures of a lethal American mercenary. In American Mercenary,Daniel Corbett takes readers on a wild ride...

Target Tirpitz is gripping WW2 storytelling at its best and a return to the RAF territory of Patrick Bishop’s bestselling Bomber Boys and Fighter Boys. The Tirpitz, Hitler’s greatest weapon, was reputed to be unsinkable and the battleship inflamed an Allied obsession: to destroy her at any...

Hidden in the shadows of America’s military machine lies one of the most secretive and elite units ever formed: Delta Force. Officially known as 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta (Airborne), this covert group operates where diplomacy fails and conventional forces cannot tread. Long denied and rarely acknowledged, Delta Force has become a silent guardian on the front lines of modern warfare, counter-terrorism, and national defence.

Climb back inside the cockpit of the world’s deadliest helicopter and learn how one mission helped change the course of the Afghan conflict and rewrite the rules of combat. May 2006. Pilot Ed Macy arrives in Afghanistan with a contingent of Apache AH Mk1. It’s the first operational tour for...

Stalking the Red Bear, for the first time ever, describes the action principally from the perspective of a commanding officer of a nuclear submarine during the Cold War - the one man aboard a sub who makes the critical decisions - taking us closer to the Soviet target than any work on submarine espionage has ever done before. This is the untold story of a covert submarine espionage operation against the Soviet Union during the Cold War as experienced by the commanding officer of an active submarine.

For over three and a half years, from 1779 to 1783, the tiny territory of Gibraltar was besieged and blockaded, on land and at sea, by the overwhelming forces of Spain and France. It became the longest siege in British history, and the obsession with saving Gibraltar was blamed for the loss of the American colonies in the War of Independence. Located between the Mediterranean and Atlantic, on the very edge of Europe, Gibraltar was a place of varied nationalities, languages, religions and social classes.

In May 1945, with victory in Europe established, the war was all but over. But on the other side of the world, the Allies were still engaged in a bitter struggle to control the Pacific. And it was then that the Japanese unleashed a terrible new form of warfare: the suicide pilots, or kamikaze. A story of courage, The Kamikaze Hunters is a gripping account of how a few brave men helped to ensure peace.

In Pathfinders: How 16 Air Assault Brigade Redefined Rapid Response Warfare in the 21st Century, military historian Mick Trenlow-Symes takes listeners deep into the hidden world of the men whose courage and precision define Britain’s airborne capability.

Ill Met by Moonlight is the true story of one of the most hazardous missions of the Second World War. W. Stanley Moss is a young British officer who, along with Major Patrick Leigh Fermor, sets out in Nazi-occupied Crete to kidnap General Kreipe, Commander of the Sevastopool Division, and, narrowly escaping the German manhunt, bring him off the island - a vital prisoner for British intelligence.   

He was a young American soldier - and the most powerful man in a remote rural District of Vietnam.

In the spring of 1969, First Lieutenant David Donovan arrived in the Mekong Delta of South Vietnam to work as military advisor with village chiefs and local militia to win the war.

But as he was the highest-ranking person in the entire district, his life there was far more complex than anyone could have imagined.

Commander Edward Young (RNRV, DSO, DSC and Bar) started the war as an amateur yachtsman and finished it as a highly decorated submarine commander. Indeed, he was the first RNVR officer to hold independent command of a warship. One of Our Submarines is his gripping and thrilling biography of his adventures below the waves, showing how officers had to transform themselves from amateurs into the equals and, at times, the superiors of the professionals in meeting the demands imposed upon them by war.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER"Absorbing history of an unlikely alliance.” - Kirkus Reviews From the New York Times bestselling authors of Ghosts of Honolulu comes their most harrowing true story yet. It's 1942, and New York City is at war. German U-boats are sinking ships just miles...

In Maritime Power and the Struggle for Freedom, Peter Padfield presents a superb description and analysis of naval campaigns conducted between 1788 and 1851 that shaped the modern world. Winner of the Mountbatten Maritime Prize, this is the second of Padfield's masterful trilogy that traces the impact of naval power on modern history, and the means by which it has been enacted.