Kategoria BISAC: History >> Military - Weapons

The Chinese invented gunpowder and began exploring its military uses as early as the 900s, four centuries before the technology passed to the West. But by the early 1800s, China had fallen so far behind the West in gunpowder warfare that it was easily defeated by Britain in the Opium War of 1839-42. What happened? In The Gunpowder Age, Tonio Andrade offers a compelling new answer, opening a fresh perspective on a key question of world history: why did the countries of western Europe surge to global importance starting in the 1500s while China slipped behind?

Historians have...

Amply illustrated with pen & ink drawings, and including a glossary of key terms, this volume, originally published in 1955, traces the history of firearms and the pioneers who made that history, step by step, to the fringe of a complex modern science.

The Warsaw Pact's strategy called for rapid advances. Obstacles such as rivers and minefields could not be allowed to slow the combat units. Warsaw Pact combat engineers could rapidly build bridges, repair or recover broken-down vehicles, lay minefields, clear safe lanes through enemy minefields, and create field fortifications.

Although less flexible than their western counterparts, the combat engineers of the Warsaw Pact were an effective force. Key to this effectiveness was their specialised equipment. Simple, rugged, and provided in greater quantity than in the West, it was...

The Warsaw Pact fielded a variety of combat vehicles, from the 2P26 -Baby Carriage- to the T-80U main battle tank. Often innovative, always deadly, this reference work details over 100 war machines that would have confronted NATO if the Cold War turned hot.

During the early years of World War II, American ships crossing the Atlantic with oil and supplies were virtually defenseless against German U-boats. Bombs and torpedoes fitted with TNT barely made a dent in the tough steel plating that covered the hulls of Axis submarines and ships. Then, seemingly overnight, a top-secret, $100 million plant appeared near Kingsport, Tennessee, manufacturing a sugar-white substance called Research Department Explosive (code name RDX). Behind thirty-eight miles of fencing, thousands of men and women synthesized 23,000 tons of RDX each month. Twice as deadly...