Search results for ""Author Mark Lardas""

With ship profiles and original artwork, this study explores the warships that fought World War II''s last pure surface battle, the battle itself, and why the outnumbered US Navy prevailed.The Battle of the Komandorski Islands was unique among World War II naval battles. It was the last daytime naval surface battle of World War II where aircraft played no role, and saw a squadron of US Navy cruisers and destroyers engage their Japanese counterparts over a convoy to reinforce Attu and Kiska.Exploring the warships, the battle, and why it was won, naval expert Mark Lardas explains that due to an intelligence failure, the Japanese escort was twice the size expected, with the US outnumbered 2:1 in heavy and light cruisers. Although both sides had the same number of destroyers (four each) the Japanese destroyers were newer and more powerful than their US counterparts. A 12-hour brawl of a surface action took place. Despite being badly outnumbered and badly outgunned and even though t

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The first book to examine the battleship-led 1941 Pacific Fleet as it was intended to fight. Packed with illustrations, this study explains how the US Navy saw the approaching war unfolding. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the Pacific Fleet was the most powerful in the US Navy. It was still dominated by battleships, but since the late 1930s had been developing naval aviation and integrating them with its battleship-led doctrine. This book is the first to examine the Pacific Fleet as it was intended to fight, and how it had been training and preparing in the months leading up to December 7, 1941. Naval historian Mark Lardas explains how, contrary to modern assumptions, it was not wedded to the battleship, but was hedging its bets, building up both its carrier and battleship strength. Most crucially, it had also been building and honing a massive fleet train, enabling the Pacific Fleet to operate easily thousands of miles from home. It was this foundati

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A new history of the most crucial few months of the Arctic Convoys, when Germany's air power forced the Allies to retreat to the cover of winter. Between spring and autumn 1942, Germany was winning the battle of the Arctic Convoys. Half of PQ-15 was sunk in May, PQ-17 was virtually obliterated in July, and in September 30 percent of PQ-18 was sunk. The Allies were forced to suspend the convoys until December, when the long Arctic nights would shield them. Mark Lardas argues that in 1942, it was Luftwaffe air power that made the difference. With convoys sailing in endless daylight, German strike aircraft now equipped and trained for torpedo attacks, and bases in northern Norway available, the Luftwaffe could wreak havoc. Three-quarters of the losses of PQ-18 were due to air attacks. But in November, the Luftwaffe was redeployed south to challenge the Allied landings in North Africa, and the advantage was lost. Despite that, the Allies never again sailed an Arctic convoy in the summer months. Fully illustrated with archive photos, striking new artwork, maps and diagrams, this is the remarkable history of the Luftwaffe's last strategic victory of World War II.

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An illustrated examination of the role played by the Sunderland as an antisubmarine aircraft during the Battle of the Atlantic, focusing on the key battles of the Biscay campaign in 1943–44. The Sunderland is an iconic British aircraft of World War II, and the only RAF Coastal Command type to perform frontline service throughout the conflict. Its prime target – the German U-boat – was a deadly adversary to Allied warships and other oceangoing vessels, but proved vulnerable to detection and air attacks from the radar-equipped Sunderland. This book examines the respective advantages and drawbacks of these two maritime predators by providing a vivid analysis of their historic engagement during the Biscay campaign in 1943–44. Drawing upon first-hand accounts of this famous duel, Mark Lardas tells the story of how highly skilled Sunderland crews took the fight to an often elusive enemy and helped RAF Coastal Command defeat the U-boat threat. Maps, tactical diagrams, photographs and specially commissioned artwork bring the action to life as the Sunderland’s losses – and eventual victory – in the Bay of Biscay play out in fascinating, insightful detail.

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A detailed and fascinating exploration of the 1945 US combined land, naval and air operation to retake Corregidor and the other Japanese-held islands in Manila Bay from a determined and well-entrenched enemy. The islands guarding the entrance to Manila Bay, Luzon, had been seized by the Japanese in May 1942. In February 1945, US forces were back, and closed in on Manila from the north and south against heavy Japanese resistance. A joint US parachute and amphibious assault was planned to capture the largest island Corregidor, using the much-reinforced 503rd PRCT and elements of the 24th Infantry Division and 2nd Engineer Special Brigade. Facing them were over 6,000 Japanese troops recently evacuated from Bataan, where they had been cut off by advancing US forces. General MacArthur desired the island, once a symbol of American defiance, to be liberated with a flourish. This superbly illustrated work examines the ambitious US assault on Corregidor, which witnessed the most dangerous and risky parachute drop in airborne history, and vicious, desperate fighting by the defenders as they sought to prevent American troops from taking the island. It also covers the recapture of other islands defending Manila Bay: El Fraile/Fort Drum, Caballo, and Carabao.

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An illustrated history of how Japan devised and launched a new kind of air campaign in late 1944 – the suicidal assaults of the kamikaze units against the approaching Allied fleets. As summer changed to autumn in 1944, Japan was losing the war. Still unwilling to surrender, Japan’s last hope was to try to wear down US resolve enough to reach a negotiated settlement. Extraordinary measures seemed necessary, and the most extraordinary was the formation of Special Attack Units – known to the Allies as the kamikazes. The concept of organized suicide squadrons was first raised on June 15, 1944. By August, formations were being trained. These formations were first used in the October 1944 US invasion of the Philippine Islands, where they offered some tactical success. The program was expanded into a major campaign over the rest of the Pacific War, seeing a crescendo during the struggle for Okinawa in April through May 1945. This highly illustrated history examines not just the horrific missions themselves, but the decisions behind the kamikaze campaign, how it developed, and how it became a key part of Japanese strategy. Although the attacks started on an almost ad hoc basis, the kamikaze soon became a major Japanese policy. By the end of the war, Japan was manufacturing aircraft specifically for kamikaze missions, including a rocket-powered manned missile. A plan for a massive use of kamikazes to defend the Japanese Home Islands from invasion was developed, but never executed because of Japan’s surrender in August 1945. Packed with diagrams, maps and 3D reconstructions of the attacks, this book also assesses the Allied mitigation techniques and strategies and the reasons and the degree to which they were successful.

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Following the disastrous defeat at Chickamauga, Union forces were in disarray and the tactically vital Chattanooga was under siege and on the brink of falling. Secretary of War William Stanton ordered Ulysses Grant to send the Army of Tennessee to reinforce Chattanooga. Grant had already reacted. The situation was dire. It required outstanding leadership to rescue the situation. President Abraham Lincoln decided Grant was the man for the occasion. In early October, Grant was promoted to command of the Military District of Mississippi and told to clean up the mess created by Chickamauga. With those orders a new campaign began: the Chattanooga Campaign. This book tracks how over the next three months Grant would orchestrate the movements of three Union Armies – The Army of the Cumberland, The Army of the Tennessee, and two Corps from the Army of the Potomac. He would lead them into a series of battles that saw them break the siege of Chattanooga before in three battles in three days the Union forces broke the Confederate army entrenched in the heights overlooking Chattanooga.

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An absorbing study of the duels fought between the US Navy’s escort warships and Hitler’s U-boats between December 1941 and May 1945. Although the Battle of the Atlantic lasted several years, its most critical phase began once the United States entered World War II. By December 1941, the British had mastered the U-boat threat in the Eastern Atlantic, only to see the front abruptly expand to regions the US Navy would patrol, chiefly the Atlantic Seaboard. Unless the US Navy overcame the U-boat threat, the Allies would struggle to win. The Battle of the Atlantic was made up of thousands of individual duels: aircraft against U-boats, aircraft against aircraft, aircraft against ships—but most crucially, ships against U-boats. The individual clashes between Germany’s U-boats and the Allied warships escorting the vital convoys often comprised one-on-one actions. These stories provide the focus of this detailed work. The technical details of the U-boats, destroyers, and destroyer escorts involved are explored in stunning illustrations, including ship and submarine profiles and weaponry artworks, and key clashes are brought to life in dramatic battlescenes. Among the clashes covered are including USS Kearny vs. U-568, USS Roper (DD-147) vs U-85, USS Eugene E. Elmore (DE-686) vs U-549, and USS Atherton (DE-169) vs U-853.

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A fully illustrated history of how the US Navy destroyed Truk, the greatest Japanese naval and air base in the Pacific, with Operation Hailstone, and how B-29 units and the carriers of the British Pacific Fleet kept the base suppressed until VJ-Day. In early 1944, the island base of Truk was a Japanese Pearl Harbor; a powerful naval and air base that needed to be neutralized before the Allies could fight their way any further towards Tokyo. But Truk was also the most heavily defended naval base outside the Japanese Home Islands and an Allied invasion would be costly. Long-range bombing against Truk intact would be a massacre so a plan was conceived to neutralize it through a series of massive naval raids led by the growing US carrier fleet. Operation Hailstone was one of the most famous operations ever undertaken by American carriers in the Pacific. This book examines the rise and fall of Truk as a Japanese bastion and explains how in two huge raids, American carrier-based aircraft reduced it to irrelevance. Also covered is the little-known story of how the USAAF used the ravaged base as a live-fire training ground for its new B-29s -- whose bombing raids ensured Truk could not be reactivated by the Japanese. The pressure on Truk was kept up right through 1945 when it was also used as a target for the 509th Composite Squadron to practise dropping atomic bombs and by the British Pacific Fleet to hone its pilots’ combat skills prior to the invasion of Japan.

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This illustrated study explores, in detail, the climactic events of the Battle of the Atlantic, and how air power proved to be the Allies’ most important submarine-killer in one of the most bitterly fought naval campaigns of World War II. As 1942 opened, both Nazi Germany and the Allies were ready for the climactic battles of the Atlantic to begin. Germany had 91 operational U-boats, and over 150 in training or trials. Production for 1942–44 was planned to exceed 200 boats annually. Karl Dönitz, running the Kriegsmarine’s U-boat arm, would finally have the numbers needed to run the tonnage war he wanted against the Allies. Meanwhile, the British had, at last, assembled the solution to the U-boat peril. Its weapons and detection systems had improved to the stage that maritime patrol aircraft could launch deadly attacks on U-boats day and night. Airborne radar, Leigh lights, Magnetic Anomaly Detection (MAD) and the Fido homing torpedo all turned the anti-submarine warfare (ASW) aircraft into a submarine-killer, while shore and ship-based technologies such as high-frequency direction finding and signals intelligence could now help aircraft find enemy U-boats. Following its entry into the war in 1941, the United States had also thrown its industrial muscle behind the campaign, supplying VLR Liberator bombers to the RAF and escort carriers to the Royal Navy. The US Navy also operated anti-submarine patrol blimps and VLR aircraft in the southern and western Atlantic, and sent its own escort carriers to guard convoys. This book, the second of two volumes, explores the climactic events of the Battle of the Atlantic, and reveals how air power – both maritime patrol aircraft and carrier aircraft – ultimately proved to be the Allies’ most important weapon in one of the most bitterly fought naval campaigns of World War II.

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This book examines the major warships of the Imperial Russian Navy which participated in the Russo-Japanese War. The focus is on the battleships, coastal defence warships, and cruisers of the Pacific Squadron and Baltic Squadron that fought during the war. It discusses in detail their design and development between the years of 1885 and 1905, concentrating particularly on battleships and cruisers. The book explores, in depth, the mutually influential relationship between Russian and foreign warship design, as Russia progressed from a reliance on foreign designs and shipyards towards an ability to produce its own influential ships, such as the Novik. The title also outlines the gripping operational history of the Russian warships which participated in the Russo-Japanese war, tracing their activity before and during the combat, as well as the post-war fate of those ships which were bombarded, scuttled, captured, or salvaged. Packed with contemporary photography and full-colour illustrations, this title offers a detailed and definitive guide to the design, development, and destiny of the Russian warships which battled the Japanese in the Eastern seas.

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U-505 was the first enemy warship the US Navy captured at sea since 1812. This is a new account of how Captain Gallery planned and executed the raid on his own initiative, and how his success almost endangered the war against the U-boats. On June 4, 1944 a US Navy antisubmarine task group in the Atlantic captured an enemy U-boat on the high seas. It was not the first time the Allies had taken a German U-boat as a prize, but the capture of U-505 was different. Captain Gallery and his Task Group 22.3 devised a risky plan to capture scuttled U-boats. This book analyses in detail Gallery’s dangerous strategy, using contemporary sources to explore why he thought the reward was worth the risk: instead of attempting to sink the next U-boat that surfaced among them, a destroyer escort would send off its whaleboat. Everyone else was to smother the U-boat with light gunfire to encourage its crew to abandon quickly. Unaware that the Allies had already cracked the German’s codes and the capture of a U-boat could endanger that secret, Gallery hoped to capture the vessel’s codes and coding equipment to read U-boat message traffic. The plan culminated in the capture of U-505 in early June, which nearly caused the exposure of the Bletchley Park codebreaking secret. Featuring contemporary photographs, specially commissioned artwork and 3D maps, this book is a fascinating exploration of one of the most controversial and dangerous raids, which could have changed the outcome of World War II as we know it.

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A history of the US Navy's remarkable 1945 South China Sea raid against the Japanese, the first time in history that a carrier fleet dared to rampage through coastal waters. As 1945 opened, Japan was fighting defensively everywhere. As the Allies drew closer to the Home Islands, risks of Japanese air and sea attack on the US Navy carrier force increased. US forces wanted to take the island of Luzon which provided a base for Japanese aircraft from Formosa (Taiwan) and Indochina, and from where attacks could easily be devastating for the invasion fleet. US Naval Intelligence also believed Japanese battleships Ise and Hyuga were operating out of Cam Ranh Bay. A fast carrier sweep through the South China Sea was a potential answer with the bonus that it would strike the main nautical highway for cargo from Japan’s conquests in Southeast Asia. Task Force 38 would spend the better part of two weeks marauding through the South China Sea during Operation Gratitude, a month-long sweep of the area, which launched air strikes into harbors in Indochina, the Chinese coast and Formosa, while targeting shipping in the high-traffic nautical highway. By the time the Task Force exited the South China Sea, over 300,000 tons of enemy shipping and dozens of Japanese warships had been sunk. With follow-up air strikes against Japanese harbors and airfields in Formosa and the Ryukyu Islands, the success of the sweep was unprecedented. Using detailed battlescenes, maps, bird’s eye views, and diagrams of air strikes at Luzon, this intriguing account of Task Force 38's reign in the South China Sea proved that aircraft carriers could dominate the land-based air power of the fading Japanese. From the Korean War through to Vietnam, to the campaigns in Iraq, aircraft carriers could sail safely offshore, knowing their aircraft would prevail on both sea and land.

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This superbly illustrated study explores the epic clashes of British and German heavy cruisers at the beginning of World War II. The opposing heavy cruisers of the German Kriegsmarine and the Royal Navy engaged in a global game of cat and mouse during the opening years of World War II. This was a period in which the heavy cruiser still reigned supreme in open waters, with the opposing sides reluctant to risk their battleships, and aircraft yet to dominate the seas. These swift vessels fought each other in the South Atlantic, North Atlantic, the frigid waters of the Denmark Strait and the Arctic approaches to Russia, capturing the public imagination in the process. This fascinating and beautifully illustrated book examines the design, development and technical performance of these opposing warships, and explores the clashes between them at the Battle of the River Plate in December 1939, the Christmas Day Battle 1940 and the Battle of the Denmark Strait in May 1941. The ships examined include the Deutschland-class Panzerschiffe and Admiral Hipper-class cruisers, and the Royal Navy County- and York-class heavy cruisers.

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Between 1550–1600, Europe witnessed a rapid evolution in the art of ship design which enabled safer and more efficient transatlantic travel. This was the pinnacle of the Age of Discovery and Exploration for the European powers, in which the galleon played a crucial role. Galleons were both the main vessels in maritime commerce and the principal warships used by the opposing fleets throughout the Age of Exploration. This period also saw a large amount of naval combat, much of it between individual ships belonging to the competing powers of England and Spain as they sought to control and exploit the rich mineral, material, agricultural and human resources of the New World. The conflict between the English Sea Dogs and the Spanish Adventurers has been a source of fascination for over four centuries. This exciting addition to the Duel series explores how the galleons used by Spain and England were built and armed, and examines the effectiveness of the cannon they used. It also compares how they were sailed and manoeuvred, showing the strengths and weaknesses of each design, and explaining how these played out in several of their most prominent battles, including the Battle of San Juan de Ulúa, the fight between the Golden Hind and the Nuestra Señora de la Concepción, an action from the Spanish Armada, and the last fight of the Revenge.

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The air campaign that incinerated Japan’s cities was the first and only time that independent air power has won a war. As the United States pushed Imperial Japan back towards Tokyo Bay, the US Army Air Force deployed the first of a new bomber to the theater. The B-29 Superfortress was complex, troubled, and hugely advanced. It was the most expensive weapons system of the war, and formidably capable. But at the time, no strategic bombing campaign had ever brought about a nation’s surrender. Not only that, but Japan was half a world away, and the US had no airfields even within the extraordinary range of the B-29. This analysis explains why the B-29s struggled at first, and how General LeMay devised radical and devastating tactics that began to systematically incinerate Japanese cities and industries and eliminate its maritime trade with aerial mining. It explains how and why this campaign was so uniquely successful, and how gaps in Japan’s defences contributed to the B-29s’ success.

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The Destroyer Escort was the smallest ocean-­going escort built for the United States Navy – a downsized destroyer with less speed, fewer guns, and fewer torpedoes than its big brother, the fleet destroyer. Destroyer escorts first went into production because the Royal Navy needed an escort warship which was larger than a corvette, but which could be built faster than a destroyer. Lacking the shipyards to build these types of ships in Britain, they ordered them in the US. Once the US unexpectedly entered World War II, its navy suddenly also needed more escort warships, even warships less capable than destroyers, and the destroyer escort was reluctantly picked to fill the gap. Despite the Navy’s initial reservations, these ships did yeoman service during World War II, fighting in both the Atlantic and Pacific, taking on both U-boat and Japanese submarines and serving as the early warning pickets against kamikazes later in the war. They also participated in such dramatic actions as the Battle of Samar (where a group of destroyers and destroyer escorts fought Japanese battleships and cruisers to protect the escort carriers they were shielding) and the capture of the U-505 (the only major naval vessel captured at sea by the US Navy). The destroyer escorts soldiered on after World War II in both the United States Navy and a large number of navies throughout the world, with several serving into the twenty-first century. This book tells the full story of these plucky ships, from their design and development to their service around the world, complete with stunning illustrations and contemporary photographs.

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At the start of World War II, few thought the U-boat would be as devastating as it proved to be. But convoys and sonar-equipped escorts proved inadequate to defend the Allies’ merchantmen, and the RAF’s only offensive weapon was the anti-submarine warfare (ASW) aircraft. For RAF Coastal Command, the first two years of the war were the hardest. Although starved of resources, operating with outdated aircraft and often useless weaponry, they were still the only force that could take the fight to the U-boats. But in these two years, the RAF learned what it needed to win the Battle of the Atlantic. Gradually developing new tactics and technology, such as airborne radar, signals intelligence, and effective weaponry, the Allies ended 1941 in a position to defeat Dönitz’s growing fleet of U-boats. This book, the first of two volumes, explains the fascinating history of how the RAF kept the convoys alive against the odds, and developed the force that would prevail in the climactic battles of 1942 and 1943.

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The full history of how the United States targeted and destroyed the Japanese capital from the air, in a ten-month long campaign by the US Army Air Force and the US Navy. In November 1944, the US Army Air Force launched a 111-plane B-29 strike against Tokyo, the first raid since the morale-boosting Doolittle Raid of 1942. From then until August 13, 1945, the United States would attack Tokyo 25 times, 20 from B-29s based in the Marianas and five from US Navy carrier task forces. The campaign included the single deadliest air raid in human history, when around 100,000 people were killed by the firestorm created by the Operation Meetinghouse raid of March 10, 1945. This book, the first to examine the full history of the United States’ air campaign against the greatest target in Japan, looks at the USAAF’s and US Navy’s efforts to use air power to eliminate Tokyo’s strategic value to the Empire. It considers how the campaign developed from daylight bombing to firebombing and anti-ship mining, and finally how the target was handed over to the US Navy, whose carrier-based bombers and fighter-bombers continued to strike Tokyo during July and August 1945. Using specially commissioned battlescenes, strategic maps and diagrams, this volume presents a detailed picture of how Tokyo was vanquished from the air.

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Throughout the first year of the war in the Pacific during World War II the USAAF was relatively ineffective against ships. Indeed, warships in particular proved to be too elusive for conventional medium-level bombing. High-level attacks wasted bombs, and torpedo attacks required extensive training. But as 1942 closed, the Fifth Air Force developed new weapons and new tactics that were not just effective, they were deadly. A maintenance officer assigned to a B-25 unit found a way to fill the bombardier’s position with four 0.50-cal machine guns and strap an additional four 0.50s to the sides of the bomber, firing forward. Additionally, skip-bombing was developed. This called for mast-top height approaches flying the length of the target ship. If the bombs missed the target, they exploded in the water close enough to crush the sides. The technique worked perfectly when paired with “strafe” B-25s. Over the first two months of 1943, squadrons perfected these tactics. Then, in early March, Japan tried to reinforce their garrison in Lae, New Guinea, with a 16-ship convoy – eight transports guarded by eight destroyers. The Fifth Air Force pounced on the convoy in the Bismarck Sea. By March 5 all eight transports and four destroyers had been sunk This volume examines the mechanics of skip-bombing combined with a strafing B-25, assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the combatants (B-25 versus destroyer), and revealing the results of the attacks and the reasons why these USAAF tactics were so successful.

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Japan was closed to the world until 1854 and its technology then was literally medieval. Great Britain, France and Russia divided the globe in the nineteenth century, but Japan was catching up. Its army and navy were retrained by Western powers and equipped with the latest weapons and ships. Japan wanted to further emulate its European mentors and establish a protectorate over Korea, yet Japanese efforts were blocked by Imperial Russia who had their own designs on the peninsula. The Russo-Japanese War started with a surprise Japanese naval attack against an anchored enemy fleet still believing itself at peace. It ended with the Battle of Tsushima, the most decisive surface naval battle of the 20th century. This gripping study describes this pivotal battle, and shows how the Japanese victory over Russia led to the development of the dreadnought battleship, and gave rise to an almost mythical belief in Japanese naval invincibility.

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In 1908 the most incredible naval arms race in history began. Flush with cash from rubber and coffee, Brazil decided to order three of the latest, greatest category of warship available – the dreadnought battleship. One Brazilian dreadnought by itself could defeat the combined gunnery of every other warship of all the other South American nations. Brazil’s decision triggered its neighbour Argentina to order its own brace of dreadnoughts, which in turn forced Chile (which had fought boundary disputes with Argentina) to order some. In the process, the South American dreadnought mania drove the three participants nearly into insolvency, led to the bankruptcy of a major shipyard, and triggered a chain of events which led Turkey to declare war on Great Britain. It also produced several groundbreaking dreadnought designs and one of the world’s first aircraft carriers.

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