Description
Book SynopsisNaval Warfare 1919â45 is a comprehensive history of the war at sea from the end of the Great War to the end of World War Two. Showing the bewildering nature and complexity of the war facing those charged with fighting it around the world, this book ranges far and wide: sweeping across all naval theatres and those powers performing major, as well as minor, roles within them.
Armed with the latest material from an extensive set of sources, Malcolm H. Murfett has written an absorbing as well as a comprehensive reference work. He demonstrates that superior equipment and the best intelligence, ominous power and systematic planning, vast finance and suitable training are often simply not enough in themselves to guarantee the successful outcome of a particular encounter at sea. Sometimes the narrow difference between victory and defeat hinges on those infinite variables: the individualâs performance under acute pressure and sheer luck.
Naval Warfare 1919â45
Trade Review
"At times breathless and colloquial, some of its assessments may raise the blood pressure of elderly veterans, but it is altogether a refreshing, astoundingly comprehensive, technologically aware work of great merit. It is a well balanced account, free from the history by the winners' biases of earlier generations. In Malcolm Murfett the maritime history of the Second World War has found its master historian." - Michael Simpson, University of Wales, UK
Students will find this a quite invaluable guide to modern naval history..... From the point of view of naval history both as an accessible record and explanation of events, and as an intellectual discipline, Naval Warfare 1919-1945 is a truly remarkable book and is highly recommended....." - Geoffrey Till, Kings College London, UK
Table of ContentsAbbreviations. Glossary. List of Maps. Preface. Acknowledgements 1. Neither One Thing nor the Other (1919–39) 2. The Opening Gambit (1939) 3. Much More Than a Phoney War (1940) 4. Uncompromising Hostilities (January – November 1941) 5. From Pearl Harbor to Madagascar (December 1941 – May 1942) 6. Stalling the Juggernaut in the Early Summer of 1942 7. From Defence to Attack in the Autumn of 1942 8. A Change in Momentum (January – August 1943) 9. Striking Back (September – December 1943) 10. Seizing the Initiative (January – August 1944) 11. Tightening the Grip (September – December 1944) 12. Stranglehold (1945). Conclusion: Rising to the Challenge of Fighting the War at Sea. Appendix I: Allied Convoy Statistics (1939-45). Appendix II: Units of Measurement – Conversion Equivalents. Select Bibliography. Index
