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Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence > Weapons & equipment > General
'Unique and engaging characters woven into the fabric of a
fantastic plot. Jason Dean is one to watch' Marc Cameron, New York
Times bestselling author of Tom Clancy Code of Honor What is a
death sentence to a dead man?He was a man with many names. Moving
from country to country, changing his face constantly so as to
remain in the shadows, he was nothing more than a ghost. For now,
he is known simply as Korso. A covert salvage operative, he
recovers lost artefacts and items, often stolen, for rich
benefactors unable to operate through normal channels. But his
shadowy existence is shattered upon the arrival at his Bermuda home
of the man he had hoped never to see again... Tasked with
recovering a missing, one-of-a-kind shipment in only four days, his
elite skill set will be tested to its limits. Failure will result
in his identity being revealed to his former boss, the ruthless
Nikolic, who would stop at nothing to eliminate the one man who
walked away from his organisation. An exceptional, white-knuckle
thriller full of intrigue and suspense, perfect for fans of Rob
Sinclair, Mark Dawson and Adam Hamdy. Praise for Tracer 'Tracer,
Korso's first outing, is everything you could want in a thriller;
fast-pace, suspense, mystery, just the right amount of wickedness,
but above all else a protagonist who the reader will want to read
more and more of. A real page turner' Rob Sinclair, million copy
bestselling author of The Red Cobra 'Meet Korso, a mysterious and
unique character you won't be able to get enough of. In a thriller
novel I want tension, pace and ample action, and in Tracer, Jason
Dean has delivered by the bucketful' Matt Hilton, author of the Joe
Hunter thrillers 'A relentless round of fast and furious set
pieces, out-pacing Reacher for tension and with non-stop violence
and intrigue to satisfy any thriller fans' Adrian Magson, author of
The Watchman 'A thrilling, race-against-time ride ... a great start
to what I'm sure will be a hugely successful thriller series' A. A.
Chaudhuri, author of The Scribe 'The most explosive book I've read
in ages' D. L. Marshall, author of Anthrax Island 'A superb,
fast-paced thriller which literally ticks like a time-bomb' Nick
Oldham, author of the Henry Christie series
In the early 14th century, a new weapon entered the arsenals of
European armies. This first generation of black powder weapons put
fear into the heart of the enemy and in 1453 Ottoman cannon
succeeded in pummelling the once-impregnable walls of
Constantinople. But cannons, which are both slow and cumbersome,
were difficult to use and often proved inaccurate. The first
handgonnes were the answer. Easily dismissed by later historians as
nothing more than crude tubes that shot wildly inaccurate lead
balls, more recent research has revealed the true accuracy of the
medieval handgonne together with its penetrative power. This
volume, complete with detailed illustrations and colour photographs
of reconstructed handgonnes, reveals the true history of what could
easily have been the most revolutionary weapon in history. This
book will be a must for medieval enthusiasts and re-enactors.
During the 1930s the popular press were carrying stories of a death
ray that could disable aircraft, and it became such a popular
notion that an investigation was carried out by a government
scientist, Robert Watson-Watt. His discovery was that it was not
that electro-magnetic waves could interfere with aircraft, but that
aircraft could interfere with radio transmissions. The strategic
importance of this was appreciated and a secret establishment was
set up to develop a means of using radio transmissions to detect
the approach of enemy aircraft - the birth of radar. As World War
II broke out Ian Goult joined this elite group of scientists - aged
only sixteen - as a lab assistant, working on GEE, a navigational
aid allowing accurate location of targets. Its success allowed
Bomber command to effectively navigate as far as the Ruhr. In
Secret Location, Goult describes taking part in work on radar and
microwave techniques that gave Britain supremacy in the air, and
greatly improved submarine detection during the Battle of the
Atlantic, saving thousands of tons of materiel and many lives. Told
in an engaging style, this book offers a unique insight in those
men whose achievements during the war have been underappreciated,
but whose efforts were a key factor in the Allied victory. Postwar,
Ian Goult was closely involved in the development of ground
proximity warning systems and and the very first ATOL.
How did technical advances in weaponry alter the battlefield during
the reign of Queen Victoria? In 1845, in the first Anglo-Sikh War,
the outcome was decided by the bayonet; just over fifty years
later, in the second Boer War, the combatants were many miles
apart. How did this transformation come about, and what impact did
it have on the experience of the soldiers of the period? Stephen
Manning, in this meticulously researched and vividly written study,
describes the developments in firepower and, using the first-hand
accounts of the soldiers, shows how their perception of battle
changed. Innovations like the percussion and breech-loading rifle
influenced the fighting in the Crimean War of the 1850s and the
colonial campaigns of the 1870s and 1880s, in particular in the
Anglo-Zulu War and the wars in Egypt and Sudan. The machine gun was
used to deadly effect at the Battle of Omdurman in 1898, and
equally dramatic advances in artillery took warfare into a new era
of tactics and organisation. Stephen Manning's work provides the
reader with an accurate and fascinating insight into a key aspect
of nineteenth-century military history.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, field artillery was a
small, separate, unsupported branch of the U.S. Army. By the end of
World War I, it had become the "King of Battle," a critical
component of American military might. Million-Dollar Barrage tracks
this transformation. Offering a detailed account of how American
artillery crews trained, changed, adapted, and fought between 1907
and 1923, Justin G. Prince tells the story of the development of
modern American field artillery-a tale stretching from the period
when field artillery became an independent organization to when it
became an equal branch of the U.S. Army. The field artillery
entered the Great War as a relatively new branch. It separated from
the Coast Artillery in 1907 and established a dedicated training
school, the School of Fire at Fort Sill, in 1911. Prince describes
the challenges this presented as issues of doctrine, technology,
weapons development, and combat training intersected with the
problems of a peacetime army with no good industrial base. His
account, which draws on a wealth of sources, ranges from debates
about U.S. artillery practices relative to those of Europe, to
discussions of the training, equipping, and performance of the
field artillery branch during the war. Prince follows the field
artillery from its plunge into combat in April 1917 as an
unprepared organization to its emergence that November as an
effective fighting force, with the Meuse-Argonne Offensive proving
the pivotal point in the branch's fortunes. Million-Dollar Barrage
provides an unprecedented analysis of the ascendance of field
artillery as a key factor in the nation's military dominance.
The Landing Ship Tank (LST) is one of the most famous of the many
World War II amphibious warfare ships. Capable of discharging its
cargo directly on to shore and extracting itself, the LST provided
the backbone of all Allied landings between 1943 and 1945, notably
during the D-Day invasion. Through its history, the LST saw service
from late 1942 until late 2002, when the US Navy decommissioned the
USS Frederick (LST-1184), the last ship of its type. This book
reveals the development and use of the LST, including its
excellence beyond its initial design expectations.
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