In 1717, the notorious pirate Blackbeard captured a French slaving vessel off the coast of Martinique and made it his flagship, renaming it Queen Anne's Revenge. Over the next six months, the heavily armed ship and its crew captured all manner of riches from merchant ships sailing the Caribbean to the Carolinas. But in June 1718, with British ......
More than 33,000 Messerchmitt Bf 109s were built between 1935 and 1945, making it the second-most produced warplane of all time. Its baptism of fire was in Spain during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39. The Bf 109 was the mainstay of Luftwaffe fighter squadrons, and the favoured choice of most of the Luftwaffe's fighter aces. Luftwaffe Bf 109 ......
A compelling, fresh account of the battle of Rorke's Drift, featuring an array of previously unpublished material including defender accounts and artwork. The author questions what is widely believed to be historical fact and instead offers up his own interpretation of one of the most established actions of the hospital fight.
This book is not another battle chronicle. It is an examination of how the motivations of individual soldiers to fight and win can make the difference in battle, especially in the face of overwhelming odds. In December 1944, the American 28th Infantry Division occupied an 85-mile front extending along Germany's borders with Belgium and Luxembourg. ......
From training for the operation to the evacuations after D-Day, this is the story of the Glider Pilot Regiment's role in the first stage of the airborne assault in the Normandy landings on 6 June 1944. Operation Tonga was vital to the success of D-Day. It included the famous attacks on the Merville Battery and the bridges over the Orne River and ......
The U.S. Army's Separate Tank Battalions in World War II
Tanks, amphibian tanks, and amphibian tractors in action in all theaters, from Africa and Europe to the Pacific How the battalions fought the war, often in the tankers' own words Crystal-clear maps The U.S. Army's separate armored battalions fought in obscurity by comparison with the flashy armored divisions, but they carried the heavier burden ......
Helicopters loom large in how we picture the Vietnam War. Kilgores birds coming in hot (and Wagnerian) out of the rising sun in Apocalypse Now. The infantry/helicopter assault at Ia Drang in the climax of We Were Soldiers. A chopper flying over green rice paddies, with a teenaged door gunner manning a .50-cal. A slick dropping into an LZ...
Arming the World tells the story of the American small arms industry from the early 1800's through the post-Civil War era. From the first days of the republic, the federal government determined that the United States should produce arms in a new, and radically different, way. Rejecting the time-worn artisanal methods followed in European ......
Waterloo is perhaps the most famous battle of the 19th century and surely in the top ten of all military engagements in the last 500 years. Many have sought reasons why Napoleon lost the great battle. This book presents the litany of failures by one of Napoleon's key subordinates, General Drouet d'Erlon, which led ultimately to defeat.
