Told with the same stylistic flair and attention to detail as the bestselling At Dawn We Slept, Miracle at Midway brings together eyewitness accounts from the men who commanded and fought on both sides. The sweeping narrative takes readers into the thick of the action and shows exactly how American strategies and decisions led to the triumphant victory that paved the way for the defeat of Japan. "A stirring, even suspenseful narrative . . . The clearest and most complete account so far." (Newsday) "Something special among war histories . . . No other gives both sides of the battle in as detailed and telling a manner."(Chicago Sun-Times) "A gripping and convincing account." (The Philadelphia Inquirer)

    Ken Harrison’s experiences as a Prisoner of war take the reader to the work camps of Singapore, to Thailand “Death Railway” and to the dockyards of Nagasaki. His journey culminates in a visit to the bomb-devastated Hiroshima long before the arrival of the occupation forces.

    Unconventional in many ways, disregardful of parade ground discipline, unorthodox in their dress, yet a force so tightly knit in the face of danger that those who knew anything about them could only marvel.

    Although the bombing "crept back" from its target, and the cloudless sky made the British aircraft perfect targets, they succeeded in disrupting Hitler's weapons program. Containing the remembrances of over 400 people from both sides--flight crews, researchers at the site, and foreign laborers forced to work there--this classic history is thoroughly irresistible.

    P. Willmott presents the first of a three-volume appraisal of the strategic policies of the countries involved in the Pacific War.

    The revised edition includes the two eventful decades of designs since the Spruance and Perry classes. The design evolution of the Arleigh Burke class, which has become the standard U.S. surface combatant, is described in detail for the first time, based on official sources. Friedman also describes the attempts to develop a follow-on class, beginning in the late 1980s and culminating in the current DD(X) program. Abortive attempts to develop new frigates are also detailed.Friedman provides fully detailed and illustrated descriptions of all classes of U.S. destroyers, from their torpedo boat forebears onward. Detailed ship profiles by the renowned naval expert A. D. Baker III are included, along with section views that show internal arrangements. Engineering plant features and complete descriptions of antiaircraft and antisubmarine weapon systems also are given. An entire chapter is devoted to destroyer combat experience in World War II, which had a major influence on ship design and development. As the only history of U.S. destroyers based on internal, formerly classified papers of the U.S. Navy, the book is vital reading for all who have served on board these ships and for all who would like to understand the origins of the present destroyer force and its future.

    Asiatic Fleet in World War II received little attention prior to the publication of this book in 1982, when Winslow chronicled their short and tragic story of heroism and defeat.Greatly outnumbered by vastly superior forces, and saddled with defective equipment; a lack of supplies, reinforcements, and air cover; and, towards the end, an incompetent Allied combined command, the Asiatic fleet met the Japanese head-on. Within a matter of three months, however, the beleaguered ships were wiped out.Captain Walter Winslow, a naval aviator on board USS HOUSTON, flagship of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet, was in a unique position to tell the riveting story. As an active participant in all the major battles the fleet engaged in, he had an intimate understanding of the calamities that befell it. In addition, he drew upon the extensive notes he kept in a POW camp derived from interviews of other American, British, Dutch, and Australian prisoners from the Allied fleet. Winslow also painstakingly tracked down war documents and battle reports from all the ships assigned to the fleet to paint a complete picture filled with graphic details of the fleet's only victory at Balikpapan; the disastrous Battle of the Java Sea that broke the back of the combined Asiatic fleet; the ghastly spectacle at Sunda Strait where USS HOUSTON struggled to survive; the suspenseful episode in the submarine PERCH trapped in the mud at the bottom of the sea; and the daring escape from Corregidor of eighteen crewmembers from the USS QUAIL who refused to surrender to the Japanese forces.

    

    Ewart Oakeshott draws on his extensive research to recount the history of the sword from the knightly successors of the Viking weapon to the emergence of the Renaissance sword - roughly from 1050 to 1550. Evidence for dating is adduced from literature and art as well as from archaeology, and a detailed chronological typology of swords is developed, based on entire swords, pommel-forms, cross-guards, and the grip and scabbard. With clear illustrations and invaluable photographic plates The Sword in the Age of Chivalryoffers first-class reference material for all weapons enthusiasts.The late EWART OAKESHOTT was an authority on the arms and armour of medieval Europe. His other books include Records of the Medieval Sword and TheArchaeology of Weapons.

    The German High Seas Fleet had sailed into British waters under the terms of the treaty ending World War I. Possibly misled by British newspaper reports, the German admiral in command decided to scuttle the fleet rather than let it fall into British hands--the operation resulting in the last casualties and the last prisoners of World War I.

    

    “Hap” Arnold, an incurable maverick whom the U.S. Army never learned to control became, nonetheless, one of only four permanent five-star generals in the nation’s history, and one of America’s most important military leaders of all time. During forty-one years of active service, he compiled an unparalleled record as an airman and was truly the father of the modern Air Force. In 1911, four years after his graduation from West Point, the Wright brothers taught him to fly, and he became the holder of U.S. Army pilot’s license number two. His rise through the ranks was marked by controversy, and when he took command of the Army Air Corps in 1938, it was a puny collection of 20,000 men and a few hundred planes, none good enough to face Germany’s modern air force. By 1944, under the impetus of his compelling, relentless dynamism, it had grown into an organization of 2.4 million men and women and 80,000 aircraft. Never before or since has a military machine of comparable size and technical complexity been created in so short a period; at the height of World War II, Arnold commanded the mightiest air force the world had ever seen.This is the only definitive biography of Hap Arnold. Thanks to the cooperation of the Arnold family, the Air Force, and the Library of Congress, author Thomas M. Coffey had access to Arnold’s private as well as his official papers. and those of many of his associates. Coffey’s research also included more than one hundred extensive interviews with Arnold’s surviving colleagues, friends, and family members. The result is a three-dimensional portrait, fascinating but fair, of a turbulent man and his turbulent times.

    

    An in-depth reference provides elaborate descriptions of 113 major British aircrafts, and includes more than two hundred color drawings, 126 photographs, and eighty-six diagrams.

    

    

    

    Before Pearl Harbor, American servicemen in the Philippines led a life of colonial ease. But from December 1941 to May 1942, defeated and humiliated by the Japanese and deceived by Washington, they fought and dies to buy America some desperately needed time to regroup and respond to the Japanese onslaught in the Pacific.

    

    

    

    Having consulted most of the published memoirs and read widely in the archives of the Public Record Office, the Imperial War Museum and the RAF Museum at Hendon, Denis Winter writes of the sort of men who became pilots, the stages by which they learnt their trade and their relationship with the machinery they manipulated. He describes the nature of their duties and analyses the technical qualities which were required for success in their execution. He studies too the mental dimension. How did the pilots think of their job? What did they think of their colleagues and their foe? What of their fears? In what way did they combat the strains of active service? He concludes by examining the unravelling after the war and the overall significance of the aerial war in which they had been participating. This new insight into the first great are combat in history suggests that it was of greater significance than has hitherto been thought, killing as many of the participants, proportionately, as the war on the ground and inflicting perhaps even more stress on those involved.

    

    written and edited by: Paul Eddy and Magnus Linklater with Peter Gillman ; the Insight Team: John Ball, Michael Bilton, Robin Morgan ; with the British task force: John Shirley ; In Argentina: Isabel Hilton ; Defence Correspondent: Jon Connell ; contributors: Ian Jack, Simon Winchester ; Additional reporting: Will Ellsworth Jones [and others] ; researchers: Lee Chester and Therese Stanton ; graphics: Gordon Beckett [and others] ; picture design, David Gibbons.

    Analyses the performance of two key parties engaged in fighting during World War II.

    

    

    Covers the castles of Great Britain with information on their history and points of interest.