Search results for ""Author Dunn, Steve""

During World War One the Scandinavian countries played a dangerous and sometimes questionable game; they proclaimed their neutrality but at the same time pitched the two warring sides against one another to protect their import and export trades. Germany relied on Sweden, Norway and Denmark for food and raw materials, while Britain needed to restrict the flow of these goods and claim them for herself. And so the battle for the North Sea began. The campaign was ferociously fought, with the Royal Navy forced to develop new tactical thinking, including convoy, to combat the U-boat threat. Many parts of Scandinavia considered that the War had 'missed' the region, and that it was just a distant 'southern thunder'; Much of that thunder was over the North Sea. This new book tells this little-known, and often ignored, story from both a naval and a political standpoint, revealing how each country, including the USA, tried to balance the needs of diplomacy with the necessities of naval warfare. Starting from the declaration of a British blockade and its impact and reception in Scandinavia, the narrative progresses to cover the struggle to prevent supplies reaching Germany, the negotiations to gain preferential British access to Scandinavian trade and the work of the sailors, both of the merchant marine and Royal Navy who had to make the system function. By the end of 1916, the British-Scandinavian trade was so important that a new system of convoyed vessels was developed, not without much Admiralty infighting, leading to the growth of naval operations all along the East Coast of Britain in places such as Immingham, Lerwick and Mehil. Two years later, the Germans, desperate to break the tightening stranglehold, even brought out their big-gun ships to hunt and disrupt the Scandinavian convoys, and at one point US Navy battleships were perilously close to engaging with the High Sea Fleet as a result. Detailed analysis and first-hand accounts of the fighting from those who took part create a vivid narrative that demonstrates how the Royal Navy helped to bring about Germany's downfall and protect Britain's vital Scandinavian supply lines.

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John Lambert was a renowned naval draughtsman, whose plans were highly valued for their accuracy and detail by modelmakers and enthusiasts. By the time of his death in 2016 he had produced over 850 sheets of drawings, many of which have never been published. These were acquired by Seaforth and this title is the fourth of a planned series of albums on selected themes, reproducing complete sheets at a large page size, with expert commentary and captioning. Trawlers and drifters served in both world wars in their thousands; and, in their tens of thousands, so did their fishermen crews. Indeed, these humble craft were the most numerous vessel type used by the Royal Navy in both wars, and were the answer to the strategic or tactical conundrums posed by new technology of mines and submarines. In his accompanying text, Steve Dunn examines the ships themselves, their design, construction, arming, operations and development; and he also relates how the trawlermen and skippers, from the age-old fishing ports of Grimsby, Hull, Lowestoft ad Great Yarmouth, Aberdeen and Fleetwood, came to be part of the Royal Navy, and describes the roles they played, the conditions they served under and the bravery they showed. The book takes some 30 large sheets of drawings which John Lambert completed of these vessels and divides into two sections. The first part tells how the fishing fleet came to be an integral part of the Royal Navy's pre-1914 plans and details some of the activities and actions of trawlers and drifters at war in 1914-18\. And the second investigates the armed fishing fleet in the struggle of 1939-45. These wonderfully detailed drawings, which are backed by a selection of photographs and a detailed complementary text, offer a superb technical archive for enthusiasts and ship modellers, but the book also tells a fascinating story of the extraordinary contribution the vessels and their crews made to the defeat of Germany in two world wars.

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