On the eastern flank of the Allied landings in Normandy was Sword Beach, which was the responsibility of the British 3rd Division. Their objectives for D-Day were to join up with the Canadians landing on Juno and capture the town of Caen. In addition, they were to link up with the British airborne forces who were to secure the eastern flank of the ...
General Auchinleck, British C-in-C Middle East and commander of the 8th Army, chose to stop Rommel's advance into Egypt in 1942. The first battle of El Alamein halted Rommel's advance cold, and his attempt to resume the advance was defeated by Montgomery, forcing Rommel to wait for the Allied offensive. On 23 October, a 1,000-gun barrage launched ...
Verdun was the bloodiest battle between the French and German Forces during the First World War. Until Stalingrad, Verdun was a byword in Germany for senseless slaughter. It could fairly be said to have equivalent emotional resonance as the Somme in Britain. French attitudes are becoming similar, but Verdun was and is, symbolic of France's ...
In late September 1941, the war in the east was approaching a climax. Since the beginning of the German invasion on 22 June 1941, Soviet forces had suffered the staggering loss of over 2 million troops. After inflicting a horrendous defeat on the Soviet armies at Kiev in early September, Hitler now re-directed the victorious Wehrmacht armies ...
The battle for Cassino was probably the most bitter struggle of the entire Italian campaign. The dominating peak of Montecassino crowned by its magnificent but doomed medieval monastery was the key to the entire Gustav Line, a formidable system of defences that stretched right across the Italian peninsula. This position completely dominated the ...
This title is structured around the career of a single tanker from 37th Tank Battalion, 4th Armored Division, revealing what it was like to live and fight in a medium tank. The focus is largely on the crew of an M4 Sherman, though light tank service is also studied. Tank operation required a well trained and well coordinated crew. The crew ...
Following Korea, by 1960 tanks and their crews had proved themselves to be a fundamental part of the Marine Corps' combined arms team. When the Marines were ordered to Vietnam in 1965, they took their tanks with them. This book explores this decision, which created a political storm. The presence of the tanks became a lightning rod for accusations ...
An enemy in the shadows, the Viet Cong was the military arm of the National Liberation Front, the Communist Party of the Republic of Vietnam. Often working with the North Vietnamese Army, they were a constant factor amid the rice paddies and battlefields throughout the war. Despite fighting an enemy with overwhelming firepower and resources, they ...
In late July 1941, Hitler ordered Army Group South to seize the Crimea as part of its operations to secure the Ukraine and the Donets Basin, in order to protect the vital Romanian oil refineries at Ploesti from Soviet air attack. After weeks of heavy fighting, the Germans breached the Soviet defences and overran most of the Crimea. By November ...
The 1944 invasion of Saipan was the first two-division amphibious assault conducted by US forces in World War II. Saipan and Tinian had been under Japanese control since 1914 and, heavily colonized, they were considered virtually part of the Empire. The struggle for Saipan and Tinian was characterized by the same bitter fighting that typified the ...
This volume covers the Japanese seizure of the island of Guam in December 1941 and its American recapture by amphibious assault in July-August 1944. Guam was the first Allied territory lost to the Japanese, making its recapture politically and psychologically important. The American invasion in 1944 was the second two-division amphibious assault ...
In the first four months of the war the The Red Army did not refer to its ground combat troops as "infantry" but as "rifle troops" ("streltsi"), dating back to the Czarist era when rifle units were considered more elite than rank-and-file infantry ("pyekhoty"). The Soviet rifleman initially suffered defeats and retreat during the early desperate ...
In this book Steven J Zaloga offers a fascinating comparison of the combat performance of the two most important tanks involved in the crucial fighting of 1944, the Sherman and the Panther. Examining the design and development of both tanks, Zaloga notes the obvious superiority that the Panther had over the Sherman and how the highly engineered ...
The ferocity of the Pacific war almost defied the available military technology. In this environment the evolving use of tanks by the US Marine Corps played a significant role; at the end of the Battle of Okinawa, Major General Lemuel Shepherd wrote in his report that 'if any one supporting arm can be singled out as having contributed more than ...
In early 1942, the United States was reeling following Pearl Harbor and the Japanese dominated the Pacific and South-East Asia. America soon found the strength to strike back. On 18 April 1942, Colonel James Doolittle led 16 adapted B-25 Mitchell bombers in attacks on Tokyo, Yokohama, Kobe, and Nagoya. Although the material damage was relatively ...
In April 2003, after a month of heavy bombardment, Baghdad fell under coalition forces' control. The forces established the Coalition Provisional Authority and an 8 km square mile "Green Zone" was formed to maintain order until the new Iraqi government became a reality. This book details the stabilization operations and the experiences of US Task ...
"Operation Iraqi Freedom" began on 20 March 2003 and has become perhaps one of the most controversial conflicts of modern warfare. Thousands of US Marines were deployed into Iraq, and their aim was to topple the dictatorship government and liberate the Iraqi people. This book examines the US marines who were involved in one of the major battles of ...
The events in Iraq in 1941 had crucial strategic consequences. The country's oil reserves were a highly coveted prize for the Axis powers, and its location provided a corridor in the defence of Palestine and the Suez Canal. Had Iraq fallen to the Axis powers, Britain could have lost its foothold in the Middle East and the Mediterranean and risked ...
The Marine Corps began World War II with less than 66,000 officers and men. Yet despite suffering 10 per cent of the overall American casualties, the Marines were able to build on their proud traditions and history to transform a small branch of service into a premier combined arms amphibious assault force. Regardless of its expansion by 750 ...
'The last great heave of war,' according to Churchill, took place with the crossing of the Rhine in 1945. No invading army had crossed this great river since Napoleon's in 1805 and the task fell to Field Marshal Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Opposing them were the forces of a failing fascist regime, including battalions of old men and boys, ...
The battle of Meiktila was the decisive battle of the Burma campaign and resulted in the liberation of Burma, the capture of Rangoon and the virtual destruction of the Japanese Burma Area Army. General William Slim believed that it would be possible to re-conquer Burma over land if the Japanese army could be seriously weakened first. In the ...
Experienced naval historian Bernard Ireland has written a highly readable multi-dimensional portrait of one of the most crucial battles of the Pacific war. Described as the 'greatest sea battle of all', the battle of Leyte Gulf comprised three major naval engagements at Samar, Cape Engano and Surigao Strait. Fought on the surface, under the sea ...
The final volume in the "Barbarossa" trilogy, this title completes the account of the strategic intricacies of the German campaign against Russia. Robert Kirchubel examines the causes behind the German failure, including the inability to resupply troops or provide reserves, as well as the lack of decent German winter uniforms and transport. Full ...
In July 1944, Operation "Cobra" broke the stalemate in Normandy and sent the Allies racing across France. The Allied commanders ignored Paris in their planning for this campaign, considering that the risk of intense street fighting and heavy casualties outweighed the city's strategic importance. However, Charles de Gaulle persuaded the Allied ...
Of the German Army Groups that attacked Soviet Russia, Von Leeb's Army Group North, tasked with seizing the Baltic States and Leningrad, was the smallest and weakest. Fortunately, General Kuznetzov's Northwestern Front was in an even weaker state. When Army Group North attacked on 22 June, it soon smashed through the Dvina River Line, and the ...
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