The first volume in the new Helion Library of the Great War, a series designed to bring into print rare books long out-of-print, as well as producing translations of important and overlooked material that will contribute to our knowledge of this conflict. Sniping in France provides a detailed and richly-informative account of how the snipers of the Great War British army trained and fought, and measures taken against their German counterparts. The author was responsible for organising a cohesive structure to the training of the snipers via the First Army School of Scouting, Observation and Sniping, established in 1916. Written in a very readable style, filled with anecdotes and fascinating detail, the author's study covers the genesis of sniping in the army, his early days instructing XI Corps, and then First Army, including much on the curriculum and work at that unit's School of Scouting, Observation and Sniping. It also includes anecdotal chapters describing sniping memories, before concluding with recollections of training the Portugese Expeditionary Force's snipers, and looking ahead to the future of sniping. Detailed appendices reproduce relevant excerpts from the army's wartime training manuals. Originally published in 1920, copies are highly sought-after. Helion's reprint is a high quality edition, newly-typeset, with a new index, and featuring a number of charming pencil sketches by Ernest Blaikley.

Available for the first time in years, this is a new edition of the classic account by the adventurer and big game hunter who developed and ran the British Army sniping programme in the First World War. When the war started in 1914, Germany's edge in the sniping duel on the Western Front cost thousands of British casualties. Sniping in France explains the methods Hesketh-Prichard used to reverse the situation and help win the sniping war. A glossary of terms and a photograph of the author have been added.

Paperback reprint of the newly typeset edition by Helion & Company, Solihull, West Midlands, England, 2004.

The second volume of this comprehensive military history examines the fall of the Second French Empire and the founding of a unified Germany. Helmuth von Moltke’s victory over France in the Battle of Sedan resulted in the capture of Napoleon III. But the war against the Government of National Defense presented quite different problems to von Moltke and his staff. Although the Siege of Paris loomed large during the second phase of the war, historian Quintin Barry fully explores events in other parts of France, including the siege of Strasbourg, the activities of the Francs Tireurs, the investment of Metz, and the battle against the French armies of the Loire, the North, and the East. As with the first volume of this study, Barry has made full use of an extensive number of German and French language sources. His detailed text is accompanied by a number of black and white illustrations and newly drawn battle maps. Orders of battle are also provided.

This book investigates several controversial issues regarding the role of the Soviet Union and the performance of the Soviet government and Red Army, to which the author provides some provocative answers. The primary question explored by the author, however, regards the effectiveness of both the Red Army and of the Soviet military economy. Dr. Sokolov argues that the chief defect of the Soviet military economy was the disproportionate emphasis on the production of tanks and aircraft at the expense of transportation means and the means of command and control. This leads the author to look at the role of Lend-Lease during the war. Through the delivery of radio sets, trucks, jeeps, locomotives, fuel, explosives and so on, the author concludes that Lend-Lease was critical to the Red Army, and that the Soviet Union would not have been able to wage a long war against Germany without the Lend-Lease supplies - a conclusion that defies decades of Soviet claims to the contrary. Finally, the author looks at the still very controversial and hot topic of Red Army losses in the war, which was taboo for decades, arguing that this is an effective measure of the Red Army's military performance. He and other scholars have estimated that the Red Army's losses were on the scale of 27 million, three times larger than the official estimates, and approximately 10 times greater than the German losses on the Eastern Front. He argues that such horrendous casualties and such an unfavorable ratio for the Red Army were the result of the relatively low value placed on human life in both the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, and the much more destructive nature of the Soviet totalitarian regime as compared with the Third Reich, which cowed the Soviet generals and officers into total subservience. Due to the elimination of all political opposition and the total control over people's lives, soldiers and civilians could not protest against the crude tactics that resulted in such a very high rate of losses. Dr. Boris Sokolov is a prolific author and a member of the Russian branch of PEN International, which celebrates literature and promotes freedom of expression. In 2008, Dr. Sokolov was forced to resign as Professor of Social Anthropology from his post at the Russian State Social University in Moscow at the demand of President Medvedev's administration after publishing an article about the 2008 Russian-Georgian War. The author of 69 books (as of 2012), his work has focused on the history of the Second World War and has also written biographies of such prominent military and political leaders as Bulgakov, Stalin, Molotov, Beria, Tukhachevsky, Rokossovsky and Zhukov. In addition, he has written numerous articles on history, philology, political science and economics. A prominent specialist in the problems of military losses, military economy and strategy, he has given lectures in Russia, Estonia, Latvia and Denmark, and his books and articles have been translated into numerous languages. He currently resides in Moscow and is working on a biography of Marshal Rodion Malinovsky. Stuart Britton is a freelance translator and editor residing in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He has been responsible for making a growing number of Russian titles available to readers of the English language, consisting primarily of memoirs by Red Army veterans and recent historical research concerning the Eastern Front of the Second World War and Soviet air operations in the Korean War. Notable recent titles include Valeriy Zamulin's award-winning 'Demolishing the Myth: The Tank Battle at Prokhorovka, Kursk, July 1943: An Operational Narrative ' (Helion, 2011), Boris Gorbachevsky's 'Through the Maelstrom: A Red Army Soldier's War on the Eastern Front 1942-45' (University Press of Kansas, 2008) and Yuri Sutiagin's and Igor Seidov's 'MiG Menace Over Korea: The Story of Soviet Fighter Ace Nikolai Sutiagin' (Pen & Sword Aviation, 2009). Future books will include Svetlana Gerasimova's analysis of the prolonged and savage fighting against Army Group Center in 1942-43 to liberate the city of Rzhev, and more of Igor Seidov's studies of the Soviet side of the air war in Korea, 1951-1953.

A gripping true account of warfare in the skies over Korea, when American bombers and North Korean jet fighters would change the course of air combat. On October 23, 1951, an hour and a half before sunrise, nine B-29s of the 307th Bombardment Wing took off from Kadena Air Force Base in Okinawa, Japan, on a bombing mission against Namsi—a North Korean airfield under construction in the heart of the shooting gallery known as MiG Alley. In under six hours, they would engage in a battle that would forever change the conduct of strategic aerial bombardment. Six of the nine aircrafts were shot down; the highest percentage of US bombers ever lost on a major mission. Unfortunately, this event that many experts consider the epic air battle of the Korean War—and perhaps the greatest jet engagement in the history of aerial warfare—has become another forgotten fight in a forgotten war. Here, Earl J. Hill presents the facts and circumstances of the mission from first briefing to final landing using historical documents, firsthand accounts of aircrew members and ground personnel from both sides, and photographs of the mission and its aftermath. This is the story of those who clashed in the skies above Namsi, the events leading up to it, and Black Tuesday’s historical impact on the aerial warfare tactics.

The memoir of a special forces veteran of the Rhodesian War, with over a hundred photos included. Nothing terrorized Russian and Chinese-backed guerillas fighting Rhodesia’s bush war in the 1970s more than the famed Selous Scouts. The name of the unit struck fear in the hearts of even the most battle-hardened—rather than speak it, they referred to its soldiers simply as Skuzapu, or pickpockets. History has recorded the regiment as being one of the deadliest and most effective killing machines in modern counter-insurgency warfare. In this book, a veteran of the unit shares his stories of childhood in colonial Africa with his British family, documenting a world where Foreign Service employees gathered at “the club” to find company and alcohol, leopards prowled the night, and his mother knew how to use a gun. Eventually he would move to Canada, only to feel drawn back to the continent where he grew up. There he would be recruited into the Selous Scouts, comprised of specially selected black and white soldiers of the Rhodesian army, supplemented with hardcore terrorists captured on the battlefield. Posing as communist guerrillas, members of this elite Special Forces unit would slip silently into the night to seek out insurgents in a deadly game of hide-and-seek played out between gangs and counter-gangs in the harsh and unforgiving landscape of the African bush. By the mid-1970s, the Selous Scouts had begun to dominate Rhodesia’s battle space. Working in conjunction with the elite airborne assault troops of the Rhodesian Light Infantry, the Selous Scouts accounted for an extraordinarily high proportion of enemy casualties. Not content with restricting themselves to hunting guerrillas inside Rhodesia, they began conducting external vehicle-borne assaults against camps situated deep inside neighboring countries. Recounting his experiences while surviving in this cauldron of battle, while also relating with dry wit the day-to-day details and absurdities of the world that surrounded him, Timothy Bax provides a rare look at this time and place.