Search results for ""author john grehan""

The most notorious, and most contentious, cavalry charge in history still remains an enigma. Though numerous books have been written about the charge, all claiming to 'reveal the truth' or to understand 'the reason why'; exactly what happened at Balaklava on 25 October 1854 continues to be fiercely debated. Voices from the Past, The Charge of the Light Brigade relives that fateful day not through the opinions of such historians but from the words of those that were there. This is the story of the charge told by the soldiers of both sides, in the most detailed description of the Battle of Balaklava yet written. Gallop with the light dragoons and lancers into the mouths of the Russian cannon as the shells and cannonballs decimate their ranks. Read of the desperate efforts to return down the Valley of Death as the enemy pressed around the remnants of the Light Brigade, and of the nine Victoria Crosses won that day. Possibly more significant are the accusations and counter-arguments that followed the loss of the Light Brigade. Just who was responsible for that terrible blunder?The leading figures all defended their own positions, leading to presentations in Parliament and legal action. Yet one of those senior figures made an astonishing admission immediately after the battle, only to change his story when the charge became headline news. Just who was it that made the fatal error that cost the British Army its Light Brigade?

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After the astonishing Japanese successes of 1941 and early 1942, the Allies began to fight back. After victories at Guadalcanal, Coral Sea, Midway and other islands in the Pacific, by 1944, the Japanese had been pushed back onto the defensive. Yet there was no sign of an end to the war, as the Japanese mainland was beyond the reach of land-based heavy bombers. So, in the spring of 1944, the focus of attention turned to the Mariana Islands - Guam, Saipan and Tinian - which were close enough to Tokyo to place the Japanese capital within the operational range of the new Boeing B-29 Superfortress. The attack upon Saipan, the most heavily-defended of the Marianas, took the Japanese by surprise, but over the course of more than three weeks, the 29,000 Japanese defenders defied the might of 71,000 US Marines and infantry, supported by fifteen battleships and eleven cruisers. The storming of the beaches and the mountainous interior cost the US troops dearly, in what was the most-costly battle to date in the Pacific War. Eventually, after three weeks of savage fighting, which saw the Japanese who refused to surrender being burned to death in their caves, the enemy commander, Lieutenant General Saito, was left with just 3,000 able-bodied men and he ordered them to deliver a final suicide banzai charge. With the wounded limping behind, along with numbers of civilians, the Japanese overran two US battalions, before the 4,500 men were wiped out. It was the largest banzai attack of the Pacific War. As well as placing the Americans within striking distance of Tokyo, the capture of Saipan also opened the way for General MacArthur to mount his invasion of the Philippines and resulted in the resignation of the Japanese Prime Minister Tojo. One Japanese admiral admitted that 'Our war was lost with the loss of Saipan'. This is a highly illustrated story of what US General Holland Smith called 'the decisive battle of the Pacific offensive'. It was, he added, the offensive that 'opened the way to the Japanese home islands'.

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In the 200 years since the famous battle in the muddy, bloody fields of Waterloo, almost every aspect of the fighting has been examined and analysed, apart from one - that of finding and illustrating locations relating to the campaign. From Napoleon's landing on the Golfe Juan on France's Cote d'Azur, along the Route Napoleon and through Grenoble, the Emperor's journey back to Paris, and back to power, is revealed here. In this beautifully produced book, we see where Napoleon distributed the Imperial Eagles to the regiments of his army, and where his forces assembled before marching to war, and where the Due of Wellington's Anglo-Allied army gathered in Brussels. The camera follows the initial encounters on the banks of the River Sambre and the manoeuvring of the French and Coalition forces leading to the first great battles of the campaign at Quatre Bras and Ligny. The key sites occupied by the opposing armies at these battles are investigated as are the routes of the withdrawal to Mont St Jean by Wellington's army and to Wavre by Blucher's Prussians. The Waterloo battlefield and its associated buildings are examined in pictorial detail, as are the locations which marked the pivotal moments of the battle. The sites of the corresponding battle at Wavre are also shown, as well as the pursuit of the two wings of beaten French Army, including the sieges of the fortresses by the British army, before Paris was finally reached. The uprising in the Vendee and the last clashes of the campaign before Napoleon's abdication are also featured. The book closes with Napoleon's journey from Paris to St Helena via l'Ile d'Aix and Plymouth. Headquarters buildings, observation posts, monuments and memorials, bridges and battlefields, and the principal locations of the campaign are portrayed in unique photographs - and behind every plague and place is a tale of political posturing, military manoeuvring, sacrifice and savagery. Together these images tell the story of Napoleon's greatest gamble, and we know that a picture is worth a thousand words!

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Having all but swept the Japanese Imperial Navy from the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean, the Allied forces stood on the brink of invading the Japanese Home Islands. The launching pad for the invasion was to be the island of Okinawa. Amid the terrible slaughter and the shocking casualty statistics of the US Tenth Army and the US Marines, as well as the unrelenting defiance of the Japanese defenders so often detailed in the many books on the battle, the vital part played by the Allied navies in transporting, landing and supporting the ground offensive is all too often overlooked. The naval forces involved included the US Task Force 58 and the British Pacific Fleet composed of ships from the Royal Australian Navy, the Royal Canadian Navy, and the Royal New Zealand Navy which together with those of the Royal Navy constituted the most powerful fleet Britain had ever put together. The total firepower of the Allied force was staggering, consisting of 18 battleships, 27 cruisers, 177 destroyers/destroyer escorts, 11 fleet carriers, 6 light carriers and 22 escort carriers and various support and troop transport ships. Pitted against this formidable array was the Japanese Combined Fleet, with just one super battleship, one light cruiser and eight destroyers. But the Japanese had one other fearful weapon - the kamikaze. The resultant battle saw the Japanese fleet wiped out, but the Allies lost twenty-four support vessels and a further 386 ships were damaged - many at the hands of the kamikaze pilots. After the fighting the Admiralty called for a summary of the battle to be written for internal Royal Navy consumption. It is that secret report, which it was never intended would be seen by the general public, that is published here for the first time.

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The key naval battles against Imperial Japan in the Pacific during the Second World War have been described many times by numerous diligent and skilful historians. Such histories are, of course, the products of many years, even decades, of accumulated knowledge, but also of a received consensus of how the war played out to its, seemingly, inevitable conclusion. That of course is not how it was perceived at the time. Hindsight, as we know, gives us 20/20 vision. The accounts here, compiled for and on behalf of the Admiralty, were written either during or immediately after the end of the war before historians had begun to give their assessments of these momentous events. These accounts were written for internal consumption, to guide and instruct naval officers. It was never intended that they would be released to the general public. As such, there was no jingoistic drum beating, no axes to grind, no new angles to try and find. The authors of these accounts relate each battle, move by move, as they unfolded, accurately and dispassionately. This makes these accounts so invaluable. They read almost like a running commentary, as action follows action, minute follows minute. This sensation is magnified by the absolute impartiality of the authors, their sole attempt being to provide a thorough but very clear and comprehensible record so that others in the future could understand precisely how each battle was fought. These accounts can never be superseded and never replaced. Written by naval officers of the time for naval officers of the future, they are the permanent record of the great victories, and the sobering defeat in the Java Sea, during the struggle for control of the Pacific which, for many months, hung precariously in the balance.

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By early 1944, offensives undertaken by the United States armed forces had driven the Japanese from many of their conquests in the south and central Pacific. The next American move was to sever Tokyo's communications with the remaining Japanese garrisons and interdict the supplies of raw materials essential to Japan's war effort. Before this could be achieved it was considered essential to eliminate the land-based air forces in the Philippines which were regarded as too powerful to by-pass. The American plan was to land on the eastern Philippine island of Leyte and, once fully established there, to move against the island of Mindoro. At this point, US forces would then launch their main assault upon Luzon and the Philippine capital, Manila. On 20 October 1944, the US Sixth Army began landing on Leyte's eastern coast, supported by the US Navy's 3rd and 7th fleets, which were assisted by ships from the Royal Australian Navy. The Japanese were aware that the Americans were poised to attack the Philippines and planned to draw the American warships into one last great battle to try and stave off the otherwise inevitable defeat. Over the course of the following three days, the two naval forces engaged in four separate engagements. Involving more than 360 ships and 200,000 naval personnel, the battle was the greatest naval encounter of the Second World War and possibly the largest naval battle in history. The result was disastrous for the Japanese who lost three battleships, four aircraft carriers, ten cruisers and eleven destroyers, along with almost 300 aircraft - the greatest loss of ships and crew the Japanese had ever experienced. In _Battle of Leyte Gulf_, the actions of the warships as well as the accompanying amphibious landings on Leyte by the US Sixth Army are vividly revealed through a dramatic collection of photographs depicting the ships, sailors, airmen and soldiers who made history.

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Set deep in the heart of the Masurian woods of northern Poland, in what was formally East Prussia, lies a vast complex of ruined bunkers and shelters that once constituted Hitler's headquarters - the Wolfsschanze or Wolf's Lair - for Germany's attack upon the Soviet Union in 1941. Built in conditions of the utmost secrecy, the Wolfsschanze was surrounded by fences and guard posts, its paths and tracks were hidden, and buildings were camouflaged and concealed with artificial grass and trees planted on their flat roofs. As the war in Eastern Europe continued, so the Wolf's Lair grew in scale and sophistication, until it's 2.5 square miles incorporated more than eighty buildings including massive reinforced bunkers. It was also at the Wolfsschanze that Colonel von Stauffenberg almost killed Hitler in the summer of 1944\. That building is still there, its roof sitting on its collapsed walls. With the aid of a unique collection of colour photographs, the reader is guided around the Wolfsschanze as it appears today, with each building and its purpose identified. Laced with numerous personal accounts of the installation and of Hitler's routines, supplemented with contemporary images, the Wolfsschanze is brought to life once more. The Wolfsschanze, however, was not the only military complex in this small part of the Eastern Front. Once Hitler has established his command centre at the Wolfsschanze, in effect the home of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (or military high command), the other branches of the German armed forces and civil authorities quickly followed suit. Just a few miles away, for example, the German Army built its own operational headquarters at Mauerwald - a complex which amounted to an even greater concentration of buildings, many of which remain intact and open to the public. Goering duly ordered that the Luftwaffe's headquarters, codenamed _Robinson_, be built further out near the current Russian border, whilst Himmler's SS headquarters at Hochwald and that for Hans Lammers' Reich Chancellery were situated back nearer the Wolfsschanze. For the first time, these astonishing sites, five complexes from which the war on the Eastern Front was directed, are shown and described in one book, providing a comprehensive survey of the installations whose gigantic scale still evinces awe and wonder.

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Throughout his political life, Adolf Hitler was the subject of numerous assassination plots, some of which were attempted, all of which failed. While a few of these have become well known, particularly the bomb explosions at the Burgerbr ukeller in Munich in 1939 and the Stauffenberg _Valkyrie_ attempt carried out at the Wolfsschanze on 20 July 1944, many others have received far less attention -until now. In this book, John Grehan has examined the known planned or proposed assassination attempts on Hitler, from Chicago to London and from Sweden to the Ukraine -some of which have not previously been presented to the general public by historians. All manner of methods were proposed by those willing to bring Hitler's life to a premature and sticky end and Hitler was well aware of the danger which lurked potentially around every corner of every road, railway track, every building and even every individual. As a result, an immense, multi-layered security apparatus surrounded the Fuhrer day and night. Despite this, and knowing the risks they faced, many people sought to kill the German leader, and some very nearly did. Yet Hitler survived, often by just a minute or a millimetre, to die ultimately of his own hand. These plots and conspiracies are detailed in this book, along with a unique collection of photographs of many of the proposed or actual assassination locations. All will be revealed in this fascinating compilation of the obscure, the fanciful and the carefully considered attempts to assassinate Hitler.

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Singapore and Hong Kong had fallen to the forces of Imperial Japan, Thailand and Burma had been invaded and islands across the Pacific captured. But one place, one tiny island fortress garrisoned by a few thousand hungry and exhausted men, refused to be beaten. That island fortress was Corregidor which guarded the entrance to Manila Bay and controlled all sea-borne access to Manila Harbour. At a time when every news bulletin was one of Japanese success, Corregidor shone as the only beacon of hope in the darkness of defeat. The Japanese 14th Army of Lieutenant General Masaharu Homma, threw everything it had at Corregidor, officially named Fort Mills. But deep within the island's rocky heart, a tunnel had been excavated into Malinta Hill and there the US troops, marine, naval and army, endured the terrible onslaught. At their head was General Douglas MacArthur who became a national hero with his resolute determination never to surrender, until ordered to evacuate to Australia to avoid such a senior officer being captured by the enemy. Bur with his departure, the rest of the garrison knew that there was no possibility of relief. They would have to fight on until the bitter end, whatever form that might take. That end came in May 1942\. The defenders were reduced to virtually starvation rations with many of them wounded. Consequently, when, on 5 May the Japanese mounted a powerful amphibious assault, the weakened garrison could defy the enemy no longer. Corregidor, the 'Gibraltar of the East', finally fell to the invaders. Those invaders were to become the invaded when MacArthur returned in January 1945\. For three weeks, US aircraft, warships and artillery hammered the Japanese positions on Corregidor. Then, on 16 February, the Americans landed on the island. It took MacArthur's men ten days to hunt down the last of the Japanese, after many had chosen to commit suicide rather than surrender, but Corregidor was at last back in Allied hands. In this unique collection of images, the full story Corregidor's part in the Second World War is dramatically revealed. The ships, the aircraft, the guns, the fortifications and the men themselves, are shown here, portraying the harsh, almost unendurable, realities of war.

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Despatches in this volume include the Despatch on air operations by the Allied Expeditionary Air Force in North West Europe between November 1943 and September 1944, the despatch on the assault phase of the Normandy landings June 1944, despatch on operations of Coastal Command, Royal Air Force in Operation Overlord - the invasion of Europe 1944, the despatch on operations in North West Europe between 6 June 1944 and 5 May 1945, by Field Marshal the Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, Commander 21st Army Group, the despatch on the final stages of the naval war in North West Europe, and, as an addition, the despatch on the Dieppe Raid in 1942. This unique collection of original documents will prove to be an invaluable resource for historians, students and all those interested in what was one of the most significant periods in British military history.

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The fate of the free world hung in the balance. Stalin's Soviet Union sought to drive the Western democracies from Germany to continue the communist advance across Europe. The first step in Stalin's scheme was to bring Berlin under Soviet control. Berlin was situated deep inside the Soviet-occupied region of the country, but the German capital had been divided into two halves, one of which was occupied by the Soviet Union, the other, in separate sectors, by Britain, France and the USA. Stalin decided to make the Allied hold on West Berlin untenable by shutting down all the overland routes used to keep the city supplied. The choice faced by the Allies was a stark one - let Berlin fall, or risk war with the Soviets by breaking the Soviet stranglehold. In a remarkably visionary move, the Allies decided that they could keep Berlin supplied by flying over the Soviet blockade, thus avoiding armed conflict with the USSR. On 26 June 1948, the Berlin Airlift began. Throughout the following thirteen months, more than 266,600 flights were undertaken by the men and aircraft from the US, France, Britain and across the Commonwealth, which delivered in excess of 2,223,000 tons of food, fuel and supplies in the greatest airlift in history. The air-bridge eventually became so effective that more supplies were delivered to Berlin than had previously been shipped overland and Stalin saw that his bid to seize control of the German capital could never succeed. At one minute after midnight on 12 May 1949, the Soviet blockade was lifted, and the Soviet advance into Western Europe was brought to a shuddering halt.

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On 1 April 1942, less than four months after the world had been stunned by the attack upon Pearl Harbor, sixteen US aircraft took to the skies to exact retribution. Their objective was not merely to attack Japan, but to bomb its capital. The people of Tokyo, who had been told that their city was invulnerable' from the air, would be bombed and strafed - and the shock waves from the raid would extend far beyond the explosions of the bombs. The raid had first been suggested in January 1942 as the US was still reeling from Japan's pre-emptive strike against the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. The Americans were determined to fight back and fight back as quickly as possible. The 17th Bomb Group (Medium) was chosen to provide the volunteers who would crew the sixteen specially-modified North American B-25 bombers. As it was not possible to reach Tokyo from any US land bases, the bombers would have to fly from aircraft carriers, but it was impossible for such large aircraft to land on a carrier; the men had to volunteer for a one-way ticket. Led by Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy' Doolittle, the seventy-one officers and 130 enlisted men embarked on the USS Hornet which was shielded by a large naval task force. However, the ships were spotted by a Japanese ship. The decision was therefore made to take-off before word of the task force's approach reached Tokyo, even though the carrier was 170 miles further away from Japan than planned and in the knowledge that the B-25s would not have enough fuel to reach their intended landing places in China. The raid was successful, and the Japanese were savagely jolted out of their complacency. Fifteen of the aircraft crash-landed in, or their crews baled-out over, China; the sixteenth managed to reach the Soviet Union. Only three men were killed on the raid, with a further eight being taken prisoner by the Japanese, three of whom were executed and one died of disease. The full story of this remarkable operation, of the men and machines involved, is explored through this fascinating collection of images.

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In 1944, a compilation of medical reports from the main prisoner of war work camps along the infamous Thailand-Burma railway was submitted to General Arimura Tsunemichi, commander of the Japanese Prisoner of War Administration. The authors stated that the reports were neither complaints nor protests, but merely statements of fact. The prisoners received only one reply -that all copies of the documents must be destroyed. As one officer later recalled, Of course, this was not done' and copies of these reports survived, stored away in dusty files, for future generations to learn the truth. Work on the railway began in June 1942, the Japanese using mainly forced civilian labour as well as some 12,000 British and Commonwealth PoWs. Such is well-known. So are the stories of ill-treatment and brutality, many of which have been published. The vast majority of these accounts, however, were written after the war, coloured by the sufferings the men had endured. The reports presented here are quite unique, for they were written by the medical officers in the camps as the events they describe were unfolding before their eyes. The health and well-being of the PoWs was the medical officers' primary concern, and these reports enable us to learn exactly how the men were treated, fed and cared for in unprecedented detail. There are no exaggerated tales or false memories here, merely facts, shocking and disturbing though they may be. We learn how the medical officers organised their hospitals and dealt with the terrible diseases, beatings and malnutrition the men endured. As the compilers of the reports state, 45 per cent of the men under their care died in the course of just twelve months. But equally, we find that the prisoners did have a voice and had the facilities, and the courage, to write and submit such reports to the Japanese, perhaps contradicting some of the long-held beliefs about conditions in the camps. Through the words of the Medical Officers themselves, some of the detail of what really happened on the Death Railway, for good or ill, is revealed here.

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Incredible as it may seem today, detailed plans were drawn up to re-capture the Channel Islands, the most heavily fortified of all the German-occupied territories, regardless of the potentially severe' loss of life and the widespread destruction to the property of the British citizens. Under the codenames Constellation, Condor, Concertina, and Coverlet, the islands of Jersey, Guernsey and Alderney were to be attacked in 1943. The operation against Alderney would be preceded by a bombardment by between 500 and 600 medium/light bombers and an astonishing forty to fifty squadrons of fighters. The official papers which have now become available state that: The islands cannot be taken without causing some civilian casualties. In the case of Alderney, it is thought that the air bombardment will have to be on such a scale that all personnel on the island will have to become casualties.' A similar number of aircraft would attack Guernsey while, for the assault upon Jersey, thirty-one squadrons of heavy bombers and strike aircraft would bombard the island's east and west coasts. This would be followed, on D-Day, by parachute and infantry landings and then a commando assault in the south-west. On Day 2 of the operation the first of the tanks were to land, with more armour and infantry to follow on subsequent days. As the German garrison of the Channel Islands was some 40,000 strong, the islands would be turned into an enormous battlefield, and a vast killing ground. The consequences for the Islanders were almost too horrendous to imagine and the political fallout beyond calculation if the operations failed in their objectives after the devastation and loss of British lives that the fighting had caused. Despite all this, it was thought that such operations would become the second front' so persistently demanded by Stalin to draw German troops from the Eastern Front and might also help the Allied forces which were about to invade Italy - Operation Husky - from North Africa. Equally, the Channel Islands would be the ideal base for the D-Day invasion of France scheduled for 1944. There was much then in favour of mounting the operations against the Channel Islands regardless of the fact that it meant the death of untold British citizens at the hands of British troops and the Allied air forces. The Allied Assault Upon Hitler's Channel Island Fortress is, therefore, the first detailed analysis of what would have been the most controversial operation ever undertaken by the British and American armed forces.

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The epic of Dunkirk has been told many times, but the numerous accounts from surviving soldiers and sailors were often a blur of fear and fighting with the days mingling into each other, leaving what is, at times, a confusing picture. In this book, adopting a day by day approach, the author provides a clear portrayal of the unfolding drama on the perimeter around Dunkirk, in the port itself and along the beaches to La Panne and the Belgian border. Reports from many of the captains of the vessels which took part in the great evacuation were submitted to the Admiralty immediately after the conclusion of Operation Dynamo. With access to these, and supported by the various records maintained by the Army and RAF, the author has been able to finally piece together the movements and actions of the many of the squadrons, units and ships involved. With the Admiralty reports and a mass of other first-hand accounts, many of which have never been published before, the true tale of the heroism of the rescued and the rescuers is laid bare. Operation Dynamo saw civilian volunteers and Royal Navy personnel manning every type of craft from the anti-aircraft cruiser HMS Calcutta to the cockle boats of the Thames Estuary. The accounts of the men who crewed these vessels tell of being bombed and strafed by the Luftwaffe or shelled from the shore. There are stories of collisions in the dark, chaos on the beaches and tragic losses as ships went down. Similar tales are told by the men waiting on the beaches, defending the perimeter or flying in the skies overhead in a valiant effort to hold the German Army and Luftwaffe at bay. Yet this is ultimately a story, as Churchill described it, of ‘deliverance’, for against all the predictions, the BEF was saved to fight again another day. With civilians and servicemen working without respite for days and nights on end under almost continual attack to rescue the army, the nation pulled together as never before. It truly was Britain’s finest hour.

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The Special Operations Executive developed a vast network of agents across Occupied Europe which played a vital role in developing and sustaining Resistance movements that persistently sought to subvert German control of their territories. The culmination of their efforts was seen when the Allied armies landed at Normandy in June 1944, with the SOE and the Resistance causing widespread destruction and disruption behind the German lines. None of this would have been possible had it not been for the Royal Air Force. Not only did the RAF supply the SOE, and the movements it led and co-ordinated, with the thousands of tons of arms and equipment needed to undertake this role, it also delivered and retrieved agents from under the very noses of the enemy. Compiled at the end of the war by the Air Historical Branch of the RAF, this is an extremely detailed and comprehensive account of the RAFs support for the SOE, and in it we learn of the enormous and complex arrangements undertaken by the Special Duties squadrons as well as showing how the material delivered by these aircraft was used in the field. This account is reproduced here in its entirety, along with a detailed appendix containing the official historical record of Bomber Command aircrews and aircraft engaged in clandestine operations. Taken together, this book represents the most comprehensive account of the RAFs support for SOE ever published.

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From its south-eastern tip Sussex is little more than sixty miles from continental Europe and the county's coastline, some seventy-six miles long, occupies a large part of Britain's southern frontier. Before the days of Macadam and the Turnpike, water travel could prove more certain than land transportation and the seas that define the borders of our nation aided, rather than deterred, the invader.Though the last successful invasion of Britain took place almost 1,000 years ago, the gently shelving beaches of Sussex have tempted the prospective invader with the promise of both an easy disembarkation and a short and direct route to London - the last time being just seven decades ago.As the authors demonstrate, the repeated threat of invasion from the Continent has shaped the very landscape of the county. The rounded tops of the Iron Age hill forts, the sheer walls of the medieval castles, the squat stumps of Martello towers, the moulded Vaubanesque contours of the Palmerstone redoubts and the crouched concrete blocks and bricks of the Second World War pillboxes constitute the visible evidence of Sussex's position on Britain's front line.

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Despatches in this volume include that on the first and second battles of Narvik in 1940; the despatch on operations in central Norway 1940, by Lieutenant General H.R.S. Massy, Commander-in-Chief, North West Expeditionary Force; Despatch on operations in Northern Norway between April and June 1940; the despatch on carrier-borne aircraft attacks on Kirkenes (Norway) and Petsamo (Finland) in 1941, by Admiral Sir John C. Tovey; the despatch on the raid on military and economic objectives in the Lofoten Islands (Norway) in March 1941, by Admiral Sir John C. Tovey, Commander-in-Chief, Home Fleet; and the despatch on the raid on military and economic objectives in the vicinity of Vaagso Island (Norway) in December 1941, by Admiral Sir John C. Tovey. This unique collection of original documents will prove to be an invaluable resource for historians, students and all those interested in what was one of the most significant periods in British military history.

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Despatches in this volume include that on the Far East between October 1940 and December 1941, by Air Chief Marshal Sir Robert Brooke-Popham; the despatch on operations in Hong Kong between 8 and 25 December 1941, by Major-General C.M. Maltby, General Officer Commanding British Troops in China; the report on the air operations during the campaigns in Malaya and Netherland East Indies between December 1941 and March 1942; and the important despatch by Percival detailing the fall of Malaya and Fortress Singapore. This unique collection of original documents will prove to be an invaluable resource for historians, students and all those interested in what was one of the most significant periods in British military history.

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Special Operations Executive was one of the most secretive organizations of the Second World War, its activities cloaked in mystery and intrigue. The fate, therefore, of many of its agents was not revealed to the general public other than the bare details carved with pride upon the headstones and memorials of those courageous individuals. Then in 2003, the first batch of SOE personal files was released by The National Archives. Over the course of the following years more and more files were made available. Now, at last, it is possible to tell the stories of all those agents that died in action. These are stories of bravery and betrayal, incompetence and misfortune, of brutal torture and ultimately death. Some died when their parachutes failed to open, others swallowed their cyanide capsules rather than fall into the hands of the Gestapo, many died in combat with the enemy, most though were executed, by hanging, by shooting and even by lethal injection. The bodies of many of the lost agents were never found, destroyed in the crematoria of such places as Buckenwald, Mauthausen and Natzweiler, others were buried where they fell. All of them should be remembered as having undertaken missions behind enemy lines in the knowledge that they might never return.

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After the unprecedented death and devastation of the First World War, few people imagined that such a conflict could ever happen again. Though the belief that it had been the war to end war' was to be shattered within a generation, in the immediate aftermath of the First World War it was expected that international disputes could be settled by arbitration through the creation of League of Nations. Consequently, the British Government concluded that there would not be another war in the foreseeable future and therefore the country's armed forces could be correspondingly scaled back. The rise of Nazism in Germany in the 1930s, however, prompted politicians and military leaders to contemplate the frightening prospect of another global conflict. The Chiefs of Staff of the three Services were instructed to bring Britain's armed forces up to a standard where they could resist a revitalized and powerful aggressor, and to put in place plans for the defence of the country. When that war became a reality, the Chiefs of Staff then had to devise schemes to prevent a German invasion and, as the war progressed, to counter the bombers of the Luftwaffe and the flying bombs and rockets that followed. Reproduced here in its entirety is an official account drawn up by Captain G.C. Wynne of the Historical Section, Cabinet Office in 1948. Arranged in four parts, corresponding to the four different threats which developed with the changing situations of the war, it details the various plans made for Home Defence between 1939 and 1945.

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The Battle of Hastings is the most defining event in English history. As such, its every detail has been analysed by scholars and interpreted by historians. Yet one of the most fundamental aspect of the battle the place upon which it was fought has never been seriously questioned, until now. Could it really be the case that for almost 1,000 years everyone has been studying the wrong location? In this in-depth study, the authors examine the early sources and the modern interpretations to unravel the compulsive evidence that historians have chosen to ignore because it does not fit the traditional view of where the battle was fought. Most importantly, the authors investigate the terrain of the battlefield and the archaeological data to reveal exactly where history was made.

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The fighting in the Gallipoli or Dardanelles campaign began in 1915 as a purely naval affair undertaken partly at the instigation of Winston Churchill, who, as First Lord of the Admiralty, had entertained plans of capturing the Dardanelles as early as September 1914. It was the Royal Navy that bore the brunt of the initial action, supported by the French and with minor contributions from, the Russian and Australian fleets. On 3 November 1914, Churchill ordered the first British attack on the Dardanelles following the opening of hostilities between Ottoman and Russian empires. The British attack was carried out by battle cruisers of Carden's Mediterranean Squadron, HMS Indomitable and HMS Indefatigable, as well as two French battleships. This attack actually took place before a formal declaration of war had been made by Britain against the Ottoman Empire. Royal Navy submarines had already been operating in the region. When the naval operations failed, a full invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula was launched. The bitter fighting that followed resonated profoundly among all nations involved. The campaign was the first major battle undertaken by the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC), and is often considered to mark the birth of national consciousness in both of these countries. For the Turkish forces it would prove a major victory.

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As dawn was breaking on the morning of 19 August 1942, Allied troops leapt ashore to the east and west of the French port of Dieppe. These were British commandoes accompanied by U.S. Rangers, tasked to silence the German gun batteries that flanked Dieppe. Other troops - the men of the 2nd Canadian Division - landed closer to Dieppe to capture the German positions that overlooked the port while, minutes later, the main body of the predominantly Canadian assaulting force began clambering from landing craft that had run onto the beach along Dieppe's seafront. This was the start of Operation Jubilee, the Allies' most ambitious assault upon Hitler's so-called Fortress Europe - it quickly became a bloodbath. The early months of 1942 had been difficult ones for Prime Minister Churchill. Stalin was demanding action in Western Europe to lessen the pressure of the 280 German divisions that were bearing down upon Stalingrad. Roosevelt was insisting that U.S. soldiers must start fighting the Germans in Europe, and Mackenzie King, the Canadian Prime Minister, desperately needed Canadian troops to become involved in the war to keep his politically divided nation together. Churchill's response to these measures was to authorise a super-raid' upon German-held territory, and the target selected by the planners was Dieppe. Apart from the notable success of No.4 Commando, the raid was a disaster with more than 50 per cent of the 6,086 men who landed being killed, wounded, or taken prisoner, plus all the Churchill tanks landed in support of the infantry suffered mechanical failure or were shelled into smoking wrecks. Yet amid the scenes slaughter, of confusion, and communication breakdown, were acts of almost unimaginable heroism, ingenuity, determination, and self-sacrifice to which the awarding of two Victoria Crosses paid a worthy tribute. There were also special missions associated with the raid, the details of which remained a closely guarded secret until long after the war. This book opens a window on Operation Jubilee, allowing the reader a rare insight into the death and destruction inflicted upon the Allied force during just a few hours, and of the damage done to Dieppe itself, with many of the photographs being taken by the victorious German defenders. The raid saw the heaviest casualty figures experienced by Canadians in the Second World War, and the photographs in this book are a stark reminder of that fateful day in late summer of 1942.

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