The author begins this fascinating book by tracing aircraft carrier development between the Wars. Eschewed by the Germans and Italians and with Britain squandering her early lead, the Americans and Japanese became front-runners.The Royal Navy learnt the hard way in the early stages of WW2 with the loss of HMS Courageous and Glorious but, following successes at Taranto and Matapan, the value of carriers was no longer in doubt. The sinking of Bismarck and the cataclysmic Pearl Harbor attack signaled the end of the Battleship era. Stung by such spectacular losses the US Navy threw its weight behind the carrier concept and the naval war in the Pacific (Guadalcanal, East Solomon Islands, Santa Cruz, Midmay and Leyte Gulf) revolved round carrier-borne aircraft.Meanwhile the carrier became pivotal in protecting vital convoys in the Atlantic, Arctic and Mediterranean. The author backs his arguments with copious examples of naval and air action.

With war against Germany looming, Britain pushed forward its carrier program in the late 1930s. In 1938, the Royal Navy launched the HMS Ark Royal, its first-ever purpose-built aircraft carrier. This was quickly followed by others, including the highly-successful Illustrious class. Smaller and tougher than their American cousins, the British carriers were designed to fight in the tight confines of the North Sea and the Mediterranean. Over the next six years, these carriers battled the Axis powers in every theatre, attacking Italian naval bases, hunting the Bismark, and even joining the fight in the Pacific. This book tells the story of the small, but resilient, carriers and the crucial role they played in the British war effort.

A military historian and naval warfare expert delivers a revealing history of the Baltic Sea Campaigns and their significance throughout WWII. From the Battle of Westerplatte on the Polish coast in 1939 to the thousands of German refugees lost at sea in 1945, the Baltic witnessed continuous fighting throughout the Second World War. This chronicle of naval warfare in the region merges such major events as the Siege of Leningrad, the Soviet campaign against Sweden, the three wars in Finland, the Soviet liberation of the Baltic states, the German evacuation of two million people from the East, and the Soviet race westwards in 1945. Naval historian Poul Grooss explains the political and military backgrounds of the war in this theatre while also detailing the ships, radar, artillery, mines and aircraft employed there. He also offers fascinating insights into Swedish cooperation with Nazi Germany, the Germans’ use of the Baltic as a training ground for the Battle of the Atlantic, the secret weapons trials in the remote area of Peenemunde, and the Royal Air Force mining campaign that reduced the threat of German submarine technology. A major contribution to the naval history of this era, Naval War in the Baltic demonstrates the extent to which the Baltic Sea Campaigns shaped the Second World War

A detailed and fully illustrated account of the development of American aircraft carriers up to and during World War II. This extensively illustrated volume tells the dramatic yet successful story of U.S. aircraft carriers in World War II by class, ranging from early pre-war designs to escort carriers built from destroyer hulls, to the gigantic fleet carriers serving as the predecessors of modern-day super carriers. Besides covering the famous great carrier battles in the Pacific, this book also tells of the equally important actions of U.S. flat tops hunting and destroying German U-boats in the Atlantic, making an enormous contribution to the elimination of the U-boat dangers and the safe arrival of transatlantic supplies, so desperately needed for the launch of D-Day. Including profiles and explanatory text boxes, the concise text gives a clear overview of each ship’s career, its fate and its significance in American naval history. Moreover, the reader learns about the technical evolution of U.S. carriers throughout the war, and the various aircraft launched from these magnificent vessels to engage their Japanese or German foes. This volume provides an overview of preserved World War II flat tops serving as floating museums for future generations as well as a dive to the sunken U.S.S. Saratoga at Bikini Atoll. Praise for U.S. Aircraft Carriers 1939–45 “Bauernfeind brings to the reader a fitting conclusion to a superb historical portrait of these capital warships that carried naval aviation to victory in World War II. This is an exemplary work and is recommended as an introductory reference for readers not already steeped in World War II ship history.” —Air Power History “The coverage of the CVEs and CVLs, coupled with the book’s first-rate graphics, profuse and precisely captioned photographs, well-written text, and reasonable price make it a very good choice for readers looking for an overview of U.S. carriers in World War II.” —Naval Historical Foundation

Drawing on difficult-to-access wartime documents and other contemporary sources, this is the first compact, illustrated study of the tactics and techniques of the US fast carriers of Task Forces 50, 58 and 38 during the naval war against Japan in 1943–45. This title concentrates on exactly how these highly successful forces actually operated: their composition in ships, aircraft and men; the essential technology at their disposal; the evolving doctrine for their employment; the opposition and dangers they faced; and how they overcame them at the tactical level. It explains in straightforward terms the intricate details of topics such as how ships manoeuvred, how aircraft were deployed and recovered, the formations and approaches used by fighters, dive-bombers and torpedo-bombers against naval and land targets, and how Task Forces defended themselves. The text is supported by a wide range of wartime photos and full-colour illustrations, showing, for example, the formations employed by ships and aircraft, with altitudes and ranges throughout the course of attacks.

From one of our finest military historians, a monumental work that shows us at once the truly global reach of World War II and its deeply personal consequences. World War II involved tens of millions of soldiers and cost sixty million lives—an average of twenty-seven thousand a day. For thirty-five years, Max Hastings has researched and written about different aspects of the war. Now, for the first time, he gives us a magnificent, single-volume history of the entire war. Through his strikingly detailed stories of everyday people—of soldiers, sailors and airmen; British housewives and Indian peasants; SS killers and the citizens of Leningrad, some of whom resorted to cannibalism during the two-year siege; Japanese suicide pilots and American carrier crews—Hastings provides a singularly intimate portrait of the world at war. He simultaneously traces the major developments—Hitler’s refusal to retreat from the Soviet Union until it was too late; Stalin’s ruthlessness in using his greater population to wear down the German army; Churchill’s leadership in the dark days of 1940 and 1941; Roosevelt’s steady hand before and after the United States entered the war—and puts them in real human context. Hastings also illuminates some of the darker and less explored regions under the war’s penumbra, including the conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland, during which the Finns fiercely and surprisingly resisted Stalin’s invading Red Army; and the Bengal famine in 1943 and 1944, when at least one million people died in what turned out to be, in Nehru’s words, “the final epitaph of British rule” in India. Remarkably informed and wide-ranging, Inferno is both elegantly written and cogently argued. Above all, it is a new and essential understanding of one of the greatest and bloodiest events of the twentieth century.

More than 800 sailors served aboard the Sterett during her hazardous and demanding duties in World War II. This is the story of those men and their beloved ship, recorded by a junior officer who served on the famous destroyer from her commissioning in 1939 to April 1943.