Search results for ""author martin middlebrook""
Pen & Sword Books Ltd Falklands War
With the surprise Argentine invasion of the remote Falkland Islands on 2 April 1982, the United Kingdom found itself at war. Due to the resolve of a determined Prime Minister and the resourcefulness of the Armed Forces, a Task Force, codenamed Operation CORPORATE, was quickly despatched. Remarkably, just over two months later, the Islands were liberated and the invaders defeated. By any standards this was an outstanding feat of arms, cooperation made possible by political resolve, sound planning, strong leadership and the courage and determination of the British forces.Martin Middlebrook, the renowned military historian, has skilfully weaved the many strands of this extraordinary achievement into a fascinating, thorough and highly readable account. Thanks to his meticulous research he covers action at sea, on the land and in the air as well as providing the strategic overview. The author's use of many first-hand accounts reveals what it was like to be part of this audacious military endeavour. The experiences of the Falkland Islanders during the Argentine occupation are also included. Thirty years on, Middlebrook's The Falklands War is still an authoritative and thoroughly readable account of this historic enterprise.
£18.99
Pen & Sword Books Ltd The Berlin Raids: The Bomber Battle, Winter 1943 1944
The Battle of Berlin was the longest and most sustained bombing offensive against one target in the Second World War. Bomber Commands Commander-in-Chief, Sir Arthur Harris, hoped to wreak Berlin from end to end and produce a state of devastation in which German surrender is inevitable. He dispatched nineteen major raids between August 1943 and March 1944 more than 10,000 aircraft sorties dropped over 30,000 tons of bombs on Berlin. It was the RAFs supreme effort to end the war by aerial bombing. But Berlin was not destroyed and the RAF lost more than 600 aircraft and their crews. The controversy over whether the Battle of Berlin was a success or failure has continued ever since. Martin Middlebrook brings to this subject considerable experience as a military historian. In preparing his material he collected documents from both sides (many of the German ones never before used); he has also interviewed and corresponded with over 400 of the people involved in the battle and has made trips to Germany to interview the people of Berlin and Luftwaffe aircrews. He has achieved the difficult task of bringing together both sides of the Battle of Berlin the bombing force and the people on the ground to tell a coherent, single story. The author describes the battle, month by month, as the bombers waited for the dark nights, with no moon, to resume their effort to destroy Berlin and end the war. He recounts the ebb and flow of fortunes, identifying the tactical factors that helped first the bombers, then the night fighters, to gain the upper hand. Through the words of the participants, he brings to the reader the hopes, fears and bravery of the young bomber aircrews in the desperate air battles that were waged as the Luftwaffe attempted to protect their capital city. And he includes that element so often omitted from books about the bombing war the experiences of ordinary people in the target city, showing how the bombing destroyed homes, killed families, affected morale and reduced the German war effort. Martin Middlebrooks meticulous attention to detail makes The Bomber Battle of Berlin one of his most accomplished book to date.
£21.53
Penguin Books Ltd The First Day on the Somme: 1 July 1916
The soldiers receive the best service a historian can provide: their story is told in their own words - Guardian'For some reason nothing seemed to happen to us at first; we strolled along as though walking in a park. Then, suddenly, we were in the midst of a storm of machine-gun bullets and I saw men beginning to twirl round and fall in all kinds of curious ways' On 1 July 1916, a continous line of British soldiers climbed out from the trenches of the Somme into No Man's Land and began to walk towards dug-in German troops armed with machine-guns. By the end of the day there were more than 60,000 British casualties - a third of them fatal.Martin Middlebrook's now-classic account of the blackest day in the history of the British army draws on official sources from the time, and on the words of hundreds of survivors: normal men, many of them volunteers, who found themselves thrown into a scene of unparalleled tragedy and horror.
£12.99
Pen & Sword Books Ltd Argentine Fight for the Falklands
Martin Middlebrook is the only British historian to have been granted open access to the Argentines who planned and fought the Falklands War. It ranks with Liddell Hart's The Other Side of the Hill in analysing and understanding the military thinking and strategies of Britain's sometime enemy, and is essential reading for all who wish to understand the workings of military minds.The author has managed to avoid becoming involved in the issue of sovereignty and concentrates entirely upon the military story. He has produced a genuine 'first' with this balanced and unique work. Among the men he met were the captain of the ship that took the scrap-metal merchants to South Georgia; the admiral in charge of planning the Falklands invasion; the marine commander and other members of the invasion force; two brigadier-generals, five unit commanders and many other men of the large army force sent to occupy and defend the islands.; the officer in charge of the Argentine garrison at Goose Green; and finally the brigadier-general responsible for the Defence of Port Stanley and soldiers of all ranks who fought the final battles.
£16.99
Pen & Sword Books Ltd First Day on the Somme: Revised Edition
After an immense but useless bombardment, at 7.30 am. On 1 July 1916 the British Army went over the top and attacked the German trenches. It was the first day of the battle of the Somme, and on that day the British suffered nearly 60,000 casualties, two for every yard of their front. With more than fifty times the daily losses at El Alamein and fifteen times the British casualties on D-day, 1 July 1916 was the blackest day in the history of the British Army. But, more than that, as Lloyd George recognised, it was a watershed in the history of the First World War. The Army that attacked on that day was the volunteer Army that had answered Kitchener's call. It had gone into action confident of a decisive victory. But by sunset on the first day on the Somme, no one could any longer think of a war that might be won. Martin Middlebrook's research has covered not just official and regimental histories and tours of the battlefields, but interviews with hundreds of survivors, both British and German. As to the action itself, he conveys the overall strategic view and the terrifying reality that it was for front-line soldiers.
£22.50
Pen & Sword Books Ltd The Nuremberg Raid: 30-31 March 1944
This book describes one twenty-four-hour period in the Allied Strategic Bomber Offensive in the greatest possible detail. The author sets the scene by outlining the course of the bombing war from 1939 to the night of the Nuremberg raid, the characters and aims of the British bombing leaders and the composition of the opposing Bomber Command and German night fighter forces. The aim of the Nuremberg raid was not unlike many hundreds of other RAF missions but, due to the difficulties and dangers of the enemy defences and weather plus bad luck, it went horribly wrong. The result was so notorious that it became a turning point in the campaign. The target, the symbolic Nazi rally city of Nuremberg, was only lightly damaged and 96 out of 779 bombers went missing. Middlebrook recreates the events of the fateful night in astonishing detail. The result is a meticulous dramatic and often controversial account. It is also a moving tribute to the bravery of the RAF bomber crews and their adversaries.
£16.99
Pen & Sword Books Ltd Sinking of the Prince of Wales & Repulse: The End of the Battleship Era
On the third day of the war with Japan, two Royal Navy capital ships were sunk off Malaya by air torpedo attack. They had not requested the air support that could have saved them and 840 men died in the battleship HMS Prince of Wales and the battle cruiser HMS Repulse. The authors re-create for the reader not only what happened, but also what it was like for the men involved. They dispose of several myths to explain the events of those confused hours, and address the uncertainty, controversy and strong emotions that surrounded the militarily disastrous sinkings.
£22.25
Pen & Sword Books Ltd Bomber Command War Diaries: An Operational Reference Book 1939-1945
Bomber Command's campaign started on the very first day of the Second World War and ended within a few hours of the final victory in Europe five and a half years later. It was an attempt to win the war in Europe by strategic bombing on such an enormous scale that historians have only recently begun to piece together the finer details of the individual raids. There have been many books about Bomber Command, but Martin Middlebrook, the aviation historian, and his research colleague, Chris Everitt, were the first to compile a complete review of all the raids and the background stories to this fascinating campaign. They undertook the gargantuan task not only of documenting every Bomber Command operation but also of obtaining information from local archives in Germany, Italy and the occupied countries, on the effects of the raids. Little of this material had been published previously, and never before had the two sides of Bomber Command's war been brought together in this way. The Bomber Command War Diaries has become the standard basic work of reference on this extraordinary campaign. This edition includes retrospective observations and a new appendix.
£34.63
Pen & Sword Books Ltd Middlebrook Guide to the Somme Battlefields
While best known as being the scene of the most terrible carnage in the WW1 the French department of the Somme has seen many other battles from Roman times to 1944. William the Conqueror launched his invasion from there; the French and English fought at Crecy in 1346; Henry V's army marched through on their way to Agincourt in 1415; the Prussians came in 1870. The Great War saw three great battles and approximately half of the 400,000 who died on the Somme were British - a terrible harvest, marked by 242 British cemeteries and over 50,000 lie in unmarked graves. These statistics explain in part why the area is visited year-on-year by ever increasing numbers of British and Commonwealth citizens. This evocative book written by the authors of the iconic First Day on the Somme.is a thorough guide to the cemeteries, memorials and battlefields of the area, with the emphasis on the fighting of 1916 and 1918, with fascinating descriptions and anecdotes.
£14.99