Автор: John Lambert
Издательство: Naval Institute Press
Год издания: 1985
isbn: 087021179X
Количество страниц: 115
Язык: english
Формат: PDF (scan)
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 submarine attacks in British coastal waters led to demands for large numbers of anti-submarine motor launches. These were not available from British sources, and the need was met by the production of some 580 motor launches, by the Electric Boat Company of Bayonne, New Jersey, USA, for shipment to the United Kingdom. Their design was based upon that of a type of motor cruiser popular in the US. Early units were 75ft overall, but later deliveries were 80ft in length. Powered by two 6-cylinder petrol engines, and displacing about 42 tons, they were armed with a single 3pdr gun, on occasion a Lewis light machine gun, and depth charges. Whilst they did provide some measure of defence, in truth, they were not very well suited to the conditions that prevailed along British coasts, being found wet in any seaway, and consequently of limited operational value. However, it proved that there was a requirement in time of war for large numbers of motor launches for patrol and anti-submarine duties. Missing Pages: 35-38 & 69-70.
Автор: Wolfgang Schneider, Rainer Strasheim
Издательство: Schiffer Publishing
Год издания: 1990
isbn: 0887402372
Количество страниц: 51
Язык: english
Формат: PDF (scan)
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.
Автор: Basil Collier
Издательство: Sidgwick & Jackson
Год издания: 1981
isbn: 028398399X
Количество страниц: 144
Язык: english
Формат: PDF (scan)
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 struggle in China and defensive tasks at home and in Korea and Manchuria. She had ten battleships and six fleet carriers in commission, but on paper Britain and the United States were still the strongest naval powers. Her statesmen, when they decided in November that war was preferable to acquiescence in American proposals, did not aim at annihilating her enemies or bringing them to their knees by a long-drawn process of attrition. They gambled on the hope that spectacular achievements by relatively small forces with strong air support would soon put them in a position to negotiate a settlement on favourable terms.
Автор: John McKay, John Harland
Издательство: Vanwell Publishing Limited
Год издания: 1993
isbn: 1550680846
Количество страниц: 162
Язык: english
Формат: PDF (scan)
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 when he wrote The Cruel Sea, HM Corvette, East Coast Corvette and others, and this version best represents the Canadian Flowers as they were flung into the thick of the bitter Atlantic convoy battles of 1941-2, described in James Lamb's The Corvette Navy and Alan Easton's 50 North: Canada's Atlantic Battleground. In 1939, like the other combatants, Canada plunged into a war for which her naval staff were ill prepared. Despite the U-boat campaign waged by Germany in World War I, little attention had been paid in the 1920s and 1930s to the problems of anti-submarine warfare, since it was widely believed that the future threat to merchantmen would come from surface raiders and from aircraft. The RCN had investigated the possibility of building escorts based on the handsome RN Halcyon class sloops, but these plans had not reached fruition by the time hostilities broke out. The timely arrival of plans for a 'Patrol Vessel of Whaler Type' from the British Admiralty in 1939 thus offered a solution to a very serious weakness in Canadian naval preparations for the new war. The corvette (as the new vessel became known) was widely seen as a stopgap until more sophisticated escorts were available, but in the event was built in great numbers.
Автор: David Miller
Издательство: Salamander Books
Год издания: 1986
isbn: 0517613506
Количество страниц: 166
Язык: english
Формат: PDF (scan)
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 navies themselves—still the 'Silent Services' in most nations—the world's fleets patrol the oceans constantly, frequently coming within very short distances of each other. Unlike the better known land confrontations, such as those on the inner German border between the Warsaw Pact and NATO, on the Chinese-Vietnamese border and on the 'Green Line' between Greek and Turk in Cyprus—the oceans have no clear-cut demarcation line to separate the opposing sides. Instead, apart from a narrow band along the coast, ships and fleets on the high seas can intermingle, the degree of separation depending solely on the skill and determination of their captains. Indeed, more than one collision between Soviet and US Navy ships has provided evidence, if any were needed, of the closeness of the watch that navies keep on each other.
Автор: Paul Kemp
Издательство: Naval Institute Press
Год издания: 1990
isbn: 1557508267
Количество страниц: 161
Язык: english
Формат: PDF (scan)
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 withstanding heavy punishment and, by the standards of those days, providing good living conditions on board. In the more distant waters of the Far East and Pacific limitations became more obvious: the lack of efficient air conditioning when dived and their comparatively low speed on the surface. This latter put them at a severe disadvantage where the wide open spaces of the Pacific and lack of long-range, anti-submarine Japanese air patrols permitted the tactics of surface operations and night surface attacks. In the light of this it seems ironic that the original Staff Requirement called for a submarine to fight a war against Japan, albeit from bases in Hong Kong and Singapore!
Автор: Michael Sharpe
Издательство: Amber Books / Grange Books
Год издания: 2002
isbn: 1840133163
Количество страниц: 320
Язык: english
Формат: PDF (scan)
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.
Автор: Jim Winchester
Издательство: Amber Books / Grange Books
Год издания: 2005
isbn: 1840138157
Количество страниц: 320
Язык: english
Формат: PDF (scan)
X stands for the unknown in mathematics and physics. An 'X-Plane' is an experimental or research aircraft designed to explore the boundaries of aeronautical science, and the term has become shorthand for any development model, research aircraft or technology demonstrator. Fuelled by the desire to conquer the unknown, the aviation industry has created some of the most remarkable and spectacular aircraft ever to fly, including rocket-powered spacecraft, vertical take-off aeroplanes, giant transporters, and experimental rotorcraft. X-planes are by no means exclusively military. In just over a century, civilian engineers and test pilots have advanced aeronautics from the tentative hops of the Wright Flyer to beyond the atmosphere with the SpaceShipOne, and are certain to go higher, faster and further. X-Planes and Prototypes details 150 of of these incredible and unusual aircraft, from the early years of aviation to the present day, exploring their capabilities, features and development. Each aircraft is illustrated with a full page photograph, annotated to show particularly unusual or experimental features, while the lively text provides an insight into the history and test career of each type, alongside archive images from the aircraft's heyday, artwork or diagrams.
Автор: Norman Friedman
Издательство: Naval Institute Press
Год издания: 1994
isbn: 1557502609
Количество страниц: 294
Язык: english
Формат: PDF (scan)
Like Friedman's other books on US warship design, his description of the play between evolving doctrine, organizational imperatives and technical issues to arrive at each class of submarine gives the reader insight not just in what a ship became but also _why_ a ship became. I was a plank owner (original crew) of a SSN-637 class submarine in the early seventies. It was fasinating to see _why_ my ship was built and what her predecessors and successors became. Being interested in Naval Science without being a professional practitioner, Friedman's book hits just the right level of technical detail. This is not a buff book. It is a serious effort to document the design evolution of (mostly) nuclear submarines.
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