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With the outbreak of World War II, Britain's Royal Navy was at the forefront of her defence with her fleet of battleships as her main striking force. However, ten battleships of this fleet were already over 20 years old, venerable veterans of the first world conflict. As such, in the 1930s two new classes were commissioned - modern battleships which were designed to replace the ageing battle fleet although only one would see active service. Together with the older battleships, which were increasingly modified in the decade preceding the war and during the conflict itself, these vessels...

The idea of a heavy cruiser emerged in the aftermath of the First World War, and was closely linked to the limits set by the inter-war Washington Treaty on naval armament. The pre-Great War concept of armoured cruisers had been abandoned, but in their stead the Admiralty saw a place for powerful cruisers, able to patrol the sea lanes of the British Empire, and which were well-enough armed that they could destroy enemy commerce cruisers of the kind used by the Germans in the last war.

The result was a group of British warships which were collectively known as the "Washington Treaty...

The breakout of the German battleship Bismarck into the North Atlantic in May 1941 was one of the most dramatic naval episodes of World War II (1939-1945). It took place at a time when the resources of the Royal Navy were stretched thinly, and the British Home Fleet were hard pressed to counter this powerful German warship, which was vaunted as the most powerful battleship in the world.

For nine days she became the most sought-after vessel afloat, as the Home Fleet and Force H, based in Gibraltar, combed the seas in search of her. After days of fruitless searching, the lone German...

During World War II, few groups within the Royal Navy fought a harder, more intense war than the men of Coastal Forces. Their job was to operate the Motor Torpedo Boats (MTBs), Motor Launches (MLs) and Motor Gun Boats (MGBs) that protected coastal convoys, attacked enemy ones, and performed a myriad of duties, which include the dropping of agents and commandos on a hostile shore, raids on enemy ports, and near-suicidal attacks on larger enemy warships. While the MTBs were the "bombers," delivering their payload of high explosive torpedoes, the crew of the MGBs used their machine guns and...

This engaging study pits the the Byzantine dromon against the Arabic shalandi in the prolonged struggle for mastery in the Mediterranean in the four centuries after 630 AD.

For four hundred years the Byzantine Empire's naval forces vied with the warships of the Islamic world for mastery of the Mediterranean. At the heart of this confrontation were the fighting vessels of the two powers, the Byzantine dromon and the Arabic shalandi, both oared warships. In those four centuries of warfare between two major maritime powers, both the Byzantines and the Arabs left us records of their...