'Irresistible . . . My aviation title of the year' Rowland White 'Stupendously brilliant . . . Completely addictive' James Holland 'The most explosive book about aircraft ever' Jim Moir, aka Vic Reeves From the terror and exhilaration of First World War dogfighting to the dark arts of modern air combat, here is an enthralling ode to that most brutally exciting of machines: the warplane. The Hush-Kit Book of Warplanes is a beautifully designed, highly illustrated collection of the very best articles from Hush-Kit - the world's leading alternative aviation online magazine - combined with a heavy punch of new and exclusive pieces. It contains a wealth of brilliant material, from Top 10 lists and historical deep-dives to interviews with legendary fighter pilots and expert analysis of weapons, tactics and technology. This knowledge and impeccable research is balanced throughout with the irreverent attitude, wicked satire and sharp eye for the absurdities of the aeronautical world that have made the magazine so popular with its readers. The book itself is also a stunning object, featuring first-rate photography alongside original, specially commissioned artwork. Inside it you will find: Interviews with pilots of the F-14 Tomcat, the Mirage, the MiG-25, the English Electric Lightning, the Rafale and the B-52 among others. Comprehensive surveys including 'The Ultimate Biplane Fighters', '10 Incredible Cancelled Military Aircraft' and 'Aviation Myths You Shouldn't Believe'. Fascinating insights into obscure and overlooked warplanes. Unbelievable accounts of the most bizarre moments in aviation history. And much, much more.

This is the third and final 'stand-alone' account of C Squadron SAS's thrilling operations against the relentless spread of communist backed terrorism in East Africa. Drawing on first-hand experiences the author describes operations against communist-backed terrorists in Angola and Mozambique, aiding the Portuguese and Renamo against the MPLA and Frelimo respectively. Back in Southern Rhodesia SAS General Peter Walls, realising the danger that Mugabe and ZANU represented, appealed directly to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. This correspondence, published here for the first time, changed nothing and years of corruption and genocide followed. Although C Squadron was disbanded in 1980 many members joined the South African special forces. Operations undertaken included unsuccessful and costly destabilisation attempts against Mugabe and missions into Mozambique including the assassination of Samora Machel. By 1986 deteriorating relationships with the South African authorities resulted in the break-up of the SAS teams who dispersed worldwide. Had Mike Graham not written his three action-packed books, C Squadron SAS's superb fighting record might never have been revealed. For those who are fascinated by special forces soldiering his accounts are 'must reads'.

From the bestselling author of The Templars. 'Voyages, battles, sieges and slaughter: Dan Jones's tumultuous and thrilling history of the crusades is one of the best' SUNDAY TIMES. 'A powerful story brilliantly told. Dan Jones writes with pace, wit and insight' HELEN CASTOR. 'A fresh and vibrant account of a conflict that raged across medieval centuries' JONATHAN PHILLIPS. Dan Jones, best-selling chronicler of the Middle Ages, turns his attention to the history of the Crusades - the sequence of religious wars fought between the late eleventh century and late medieval periods, in which armies from European Christian states attempted to wrest the Holy Land from Islamic rule, and which have left an enduring imprint on relations between the Muslim world and the West. From the preaching of the First Crusade by Pope Urban II in 1095 to the loss of the last crusader outpost in the Levant in 1302-03, and from the taking of Jerusalem from the Fatimids in 1099 to the fall of Acre to the Mamluks in 1291, Crusaders tells a tale soaked in Islamic, Christian and Jewish blood, peopled by extraordinary characters, and characterised by both low ambition and high principle. Dan Jones is a master of popular narrative history, with the priceless ability to write page-turning narrative history underpinned by authoritative scholarship. Never before has the era of the Crusades been depicted in such bright and striking colours, or their story told with such gusto. PRAISE FOR THE TEMPLARS: 'A fresh, muscular and compelling history of the ultimate military-religious crusading order, combining sensible scholarship with narrative swagger' SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE. 'Dan Jones has created a gripping page-turner out of the dramatic history of the Templars' PHILIPPA GREGORY. 'The story of the Templars, the ultimate holy warriors, is an extraordinary saga of fanaticism, bravery, treachery and betrayal, and in Dan Jones they have a worthy chronicler. The Templars is a wonderful book!' BERNARD CORNWELL. 'Told with all Jones's usual verve and panache, this is a dramatic and gripping tale of courage and stupidity, faith and betrayal' MAIL ON SUNDAY. 'This is another triumphant tale from a historian who writes as addictively as any page-turning novelist' OBSERVER. 'The Templars is exhilarating, epic, sword-swinging history' TLS. 'Jones carries the Templars through the crusades with clarity and verve. This is unabashed narrative history, fast-paced and full of incident ... Jones tells their story extremely well' SUNDAY TIMES.

An exciting and thoroughly well-written adventure from Steve Turley.. When a U-boat is sunk off the coast of Corsica in 1943, it takes with it a mysterious cargo which was being secretly transported under SS guard. Mike Summers, a technical diving expert, has his life thrown into chaos when he accidentally discovers wreckage from the U-boat and crosses swords with a notorious Corsican nationalist leader, resulting in the death of his friend. The race to discover the motive for the killing takes a deadly turn when Monica, a beautiful Swiss marine archaeologist, is kidnapped by the gang. Mike knows they are both likely to die unless he can use his superior knowledge of deep wreck diving to save them both and bring the perpetrators to justice. Another quality read from CheckPoint Press..

Learn about the rise of Adolf Hitler, Pearl Harbour and the D-Day Landings in The WWII Book. Part of the fascinating Big Ideas series, this book tackles tricky topics and themes in a simple and easy to follow format. Learn about World War 2 in this overview guide to the subject, brilliant for beginners looking to learn and war experts wishing to refresh their knowledge alike! The WWII Book brings a fresh and vibrant take on the topic through eye-catching graphics and diagrams to immerse yourself in. This captivating book will broaden your understanding of World War 2, with: - More than 100 ground-breaking ideas on the Second World War - Packed with facts, charts, timelines and graphs to help explain core concepts - A visual approach to big subjects with striking illustrations and graphics throughout - Easy to follow text makes topics accessible for people at any level of understanding The World War II Book is the perfect introduction to the biggest war in history, aimed at adults with an interest in the subject, and politics and history students wanting to gain more of an overview. Here you'll discover more than 90 of the key ideas and events during and surrounding the conflict, through exciting text and bold graphics. If you've ever wanted to know the crucial events of World War 2 and the people behind them, this is the perfect book for you. Your World War 2 Questions, Simply Explained Discover the key battles, tactics, technologies and turning points of the Second World War - the epic conflict that shaped the modern world. If you thought it was difficult to learn about the many events and key figures of World War 2, The WWII Book presents vital information in a clear layout. From Fascism in the 1930s to Pearl Harbour, Hitler and Nazi Germany to the bombing of Hiroshima - superb mind maps and step-by-step summaries will teach you all the main concepts. The Big Ideas Series With millions of copies sold worldwide, The WWII Book is part of the award-winning Big Ideas series from DK. The series uses striking graphics along with engaging writing, making big topics easy to understand.

A gripping eyewitness account of a major 20th-century military conflict by the UK's most popular writer on geopolitics; The shattering of Yugoslavia in the 1990s showed that, after nearly 50 years of peace, war could return to Europe. It came to its bloody conclusion in Kosovo in 1999.; Tim Marshall, then diplomatic editor at Sky News, was on the ground covering the Kosovo War. This is his illuminating account of how events unfolded, a thrilling journalistic memoir drawing on personal experience, eyewitness accounts, and interviews with intelligence officials from five countries.; Twenty years on from the war's end, with the rise of Russian power, a weakened NATO and stalled EU expansion, this story is more relevant than ever, as questions remain about the possibility of conflict on European soil. Utterly gripping, this is Tim Marshall at his very best: behind the lines, under fire and full of the insight that has made him one of Britain's foremost writers on geopolitics.

The 9th Battalion The Sherwood Foresters (Notts and Derby) was part of Lord Kitchener's "New Army" made up initially of men from the north midlands This is their story complete with pictures of many of the men The 9th Battalion was not an elite force, but a group of ordinary working men who felt compelled to serve their country but found themselves in the most extra-ordinary military conflagration

The six-month siege of Khe Sanh in 1968 was the largest, most intense battle of the Vietnam War. For six thousand trapped U.S. Marines, it was a nightmare; for President Johnson, an obsession. For General Westmoreland, it was to be the final vindication of technological weaponry; for General Giap, architect of the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu, it was a spectacular ruse masking troops moving south for the Tet offensive. With a new introduction by Mark Bowden-best-selling author of Hu? 1968-Robert Pisor's immersive narrative of the action at Khe Sanh is a timely reminder of the human cost of war, and a visceral portrait of Vietnam's fiercest and most epic close-quarters battle. Readers may find the politics and the tactics of the Vietnam War, as they played out at Khe Sahn fifty years ago, echoed in our nation's global incursions today. Robert Pisor sets forth the history, the politics, the strategies, and, above all, the desperate reality of the battle that became the turning point of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

The Battle of Britain was the decisive air campaign fought over Southern England in the summer and autumn of 1940. From 10th July until 31st October 1940 Fighter Command aircrews from over 16 nations fought and died repelling the Luftwaffe. Discover tales of courage, bravery and a host of fascinating, and little-known facts about the combatants, leaders and strategies of both sides. Find out about propaganda employed by both sides to try and influence the battle, the Dowding system relaying information to the pilots in their fighter's and the classic 1969 film starring Sir Laurence Oliver. This absorbing book is published to coincide with the commemorations surrounding the 80th Anniversary of the Battle of Britain 2020. "The Amazing and Extraordinary Facts series" presents interesting, surprising and little-known facts and stories about a wide range of topics which are guaranteed to inform, absorb and entertain in equal measure.

Was the outcome of the First World War on a knife edge? In this major new account of German wartime politics and strategy Holger Afflerbach argues that the outcome of the war was actually in the balance until relatively late in the war. Using new evidence from diaries, letters and memoirs, he fundamentally revises our understanding of German strategy from the decision to go to war and the failure of the western offensive to the radicalisation of Germany's war effort under Hindenburg and Ludendorff and the ultimate collapse of the Central Powers. He uncovers the struggles in wartime Germany between supporters of peace and hardliners who wanted to fight to the finish. He suggests that Germany was not nearly as committed to all-out conquest as previous accounts argue. Numerous German peace advances could have offered the opportunity to end the war before it dragged Europe into the abyss.

Joe Pappalardo's Inferno tells the true story of the men who flew the deadliest missions of World War II, and an unlikely hero who received the Medal of Honor in the midst of the bloodiest military campaign in aviation history. There's no higher accolade in the U.S. military than the Medal of Honor, and 472 people received it for their action during World War II. But only one was demoted right after: Maynard Harrison Smith. Smith is one of the most unlikely heroes of the war, where he served in B-17s during the early days of the bombing of France and Germany from England. From his juvenile delinquent past in Michigan, through the war and during the decades after, Smith's life seemed to be a series of very public missteps. The other airmen took to calling the 5-foot, 5-inch airman "Snuffy" after an unappealing movie character. This is also the man who, on a tragically mishandled mission over France on May 1, 1943, single-handedly saved the crewmen in his stricken B-17. With every other gunner injured or bailed out, Smith stood alone in the fuselage of a shattered, nameless bomber and fought fires, treated wounded crew and fought off fighters. His ordeal is part of a forgotten mission that aircrews came to call the May Day Massacre. The skies over Europe in 1943 were a charnel house for U.S. pilots, who were being led by tacticians surprised by the brutal effectiveness of German defenses. By May 1943 the combat losses among bomb crews were a staggering 40 to 50 percent. The backdrop of Smith's story intersects with some of the luminaries of aviation history, including Curtis Lemay, Ira Eaker and "Hap" Arnold, during critical times of their storied careers. Inferno also examines Smith's life in a new, comprehensive light, through the use of exclusive interviews of those who knew him (including fellow MOH recipients and family) as well as public and archival records. This is both a thrilling and horrifying story of the air war over Europe during WWII and a fascinating look at one of America's forgotten heroes.

'Invasion Rabaul' is a gut-wrenching account of courage and sacrifice, folly and disaster, as seen through the eyes of the Allied defenders who survived the Japanese assault on Britain during the opening days of World War II.

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'His masterpiece' Antony Beevor, Spectator 'A masterful performance' Sunday Times 'By far the best book on the Vietnam War' Gerald Degroot, The Times, Book of the Year Vietnam became the Western world's most divisive modern conflict, precipitating a battlefield humiliation for France in 1954, then a vastly greater one for the United States in 1975. Max Hastings has spent the past three years interviewing scores of participants on both sides, as well as researching a multitude of American and Vietnamese documents and memoirs, to create an epic narrative of an epic struggle. He portrays the set pieces of Dienbienphu, the Tet offensive, the air blitz of North Vietnam, and less familiar battles such as the bloodbath at Daido, where a US Marine battalion was almost wiped out, together with extraordinary recollections of Ho Chi Minh's warriors. Here are the vivid realities of strife amid jungle and paddies that killed 2 million people. Many writers treat the war as a US tragedy, yet Hastings sees it as overwhelmingly that of the Vietnamese people, of whom forty died for every American. US blunders and atrocities were matched by those committed by their enemies. While all the world has seen the image of a screaming, naked girl seared by napalm, it forgets countless eviscerations, beheadings and murders carried out by the communists. The people of both former Vietnams paid a bitter price for the Northerners' victory in privation and oppression. Here is testimony from Vietcong guerrillas, Southern paratroopers, Saigon bargirls and Hanoi students alongside that of infantrymen from South Dakota, Marines from North Carolina, Huey pilots from Arkansas. No past volume has blended a political and military narrative of the entire conflict with heart-stopping personal experiences, in the fashion that Max Hastings' readers know so well. The author suggests that neither side deserved to win this struggle with so many lessons for the 21st century about the misuse of military might to confront intractable political and cultural challenges. He marshals testimony from warlords and peasants, statesmen and soldiers, to create an extraordinary record.

Charts the incredible rise of South Korea, from colonisation and civil war to today's thriving nation. South Korea has a remarkable history. Born from the ashes of imperial domination, partition and a devastating war, back in the 1950s there were real doubts about its survival as an independent state. Yet South Korea endures: today it is a boisterous democracy, a vibrant market economy, a tech powerhouse, and home to the coolest of cultures. In just seventy years, this society has grown from a shrimp into a whale. What explains this extraordinary transformation? For some, it was individual South Koreans who fought to change their country, and still strive to shape it. For others, it was forward-looking political and business leaders with a vision. Either way, it's clear that this is the story of a people who dreamt big, and whose dreams came true. Shrimp to Whale is a lively history of South Korea, from its millennia-old roots, through the division of the Peninsula, dictatorship and economic growth, to today's global powerhouse.

‘. . . it is nine months this evening since I last saw the light in my own house, when I had to tear myself away from all that is dear to me. And today is also my little son’s birthday. Oh, how I long for home.’

So wrote Michael Muller in 1901 as he gazed at the lights of Cape Town from a ship bound for Bermuda, after months of internment in a British POW camp in Simon’s Town. The camps were full, so Boer prisoners were being sent to other parts of the empire. Michael’s brothers, Chris and Pieter, were exiled to Ceylon, while Lool was held in the Green Point camp in Cape Town.

Remarkably, three of the brothers kept diaries – the only known instance of this happening in the Boer War. They recorded their intimate thoughts and turbulent emotions, and the diaries gave them agency. The scrawled notes of Chris on the evening after the legendary Magersfontein battle, the rain-dashed pages written by Lool in Colesberg, and the angry words penned by Michael about his treatment at Surrender Hill, have the urgency of men determined to go on record.

When Beverley Roos-Muller first began to explore writing about the Boer experience of the war, she read the tiny war diary of Michael, grandfather of her husband, Ampie Muller. It led her to the discovery of the other diaries and many more documents. She also records the brothers’ difficult return home and examines the consequences for South Africa of the bitterness this strife invoked.

This is a beautifully told account of the fellowship of four brothers in war, their capture and their eventual recovery.

On September 10, 1813, the hot, still air that hung over Lake Erie was broken by the sounds of sharp conflict. Led by Oliver Hazard Perry, the American fleet met the British, and though they sustained heavy losses, Perry and his men achieved one of the most stunning victories in the War of 1812. Author Walter Rybka traces the Lake Erie Campaign from the struggle to build the fleet in Erie, Pennsylvania, during the dead of winter and the conflict between rival egos of Perry and his second in command, Jesse Duncan Elliott, through the exceptionally bloody battle that was the first U.S. victory in a fleet action. With the singular perspective of having sailed the reconstructed U.S. brig Niagara for over twenty years, Rybka brings the knowledge of a shipmaster to the story of the Lake Erie Campaign and the culminating Battle of Lake Erie.