In the late 19th and early 20th century, a combination of coastal defence for the homeland and fleet defence for the East Indies became the established naval strategy for the Royal Dutch Navy and set
Through a wealth of photographs and color illustrations and an informed narrative, Blue Skies, Orange Wings documents the surprisingly strong role of Dutch aircraft, airmen, designers, and airlines in
When the United States went to war with Spain in April 1898, few European observers believed the small and relatively inexperienced American navy could achieve a decisive naval victory over an establi
The history of Nazi Germany’s attempt to build a modern aircraft carrier, and the other aviation ships that Germany and Italy designed or operated.The quest for a modern aircraft carrier was the ultimate symbol of the Axis powers’ challenge to Allied naval might, but fully-fledged carriers proved either too difficult, expensive, or politically unpopular for either to make operational. After the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935, Hitler publicly stated his intention to build an aircraft carrier, the Graf Zeppelin, which was launched in 1938. A year later, the ambitious fleet-expansion Z-Plan, was unveiled with two additional aircraft carriers earmarked for production. However, by the beginning of World War II, Graf Zeppelin was not yet completed and work was halted. Further aircraft carrier designs and conversion projects such as the ocean liner Europa and heavy cruiser Seydlitz were considered but, in January 1943, all construction work on surface vessels ceased and naval resources
Despite imperial politics, a modern Austro-Hungarian battleship fleet was built and contested Italian dominance of the Adriatic and the Mediterranean through a series of daring naval raids that netted
At the start of the 20th century the Ottoman Navy was a shadow of its former might, a reflection of the empire as a whole - the "Sick Man of Europe". Years of defeat, nepotism, and n
This is the story of Germany's commerce raiders of World War I, the surface ships that were supposed to starve the British Isles of the vast cargoes of vital resources being shipped from the furthest
This authoritative study examines the French Navy's last battleships, using detailed color plates and historical photographs, taking them from their inception before World War I, through their service
At the outbreak of World War I, Austria-Hungary had four modern light cruisers and twenty modern destroyers at their disposal, constructed in the early 20th century to defend their growing overseas in
In 1940, the strategically vital island of Malta was Britain's last toehold in the central Mediterranean, wreaking havoc among Axis shipping. Launching an air campaign to knock Malta out of the war, first Italy and then Germany sought to force a surrender or reduce the defenses enough to allow an invasion. Drawing on original documents, multilingual aviation analyst Ryan Noppen explains how technical and tactical problems caused the original Italian air campaign of 1940–41 to fail, and then how the German intervention came close to knocking Malta out of the war. Using stunning full color artwork, this fascinating book explains why the attempt by the Axis powers to take the British colony of Malta ultimately failed.
