The Office of Ordnance has been ill-served by previous accounts of its role in arming the Royal Navy during the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. Cole offers an in-depth examination of its organizational structure and demonstrates how the department responded to the pressures of war over an extended period of time.

Launched in 1906, HMS Dreadnought was the first 'all-big-gun' battleship and as such revolutionised battleship design for more than a generation. She was built at Portsmouth in 14 months, a record which has never been equalled, and when she was launched she was superior in both firepower and speed to anything then afloat. Perhaps even more radical than her design was the proposal to adopt Parsons turbines, which at the time had been hardly tested. Though she saw little action during her career, her influence was profound and she gave her name to a class of ship that dominated the high seas for more than a generation. As part of the renowned Anatomy of the Ship series, this book provides the finest documentation of the Bellona, with a complete set of superb line drawings, supported by technical details and a record of the ship's service history.

Germany in the Great War Illustrated - Mobilisation and the Western Advance is the first volume of a projected six-part series that details, graphically, the Central Powers - Germany and Austro-Hungary - fighting to the west during the concluding months of 1914. This superbly illustrated and highly researched book covers the schema of a 'quick victory' on the WestFront (Western Front). From preparatory build-up, to mobilisation and to subsequent annexation and occupation, (90 per cent of northern France and the Kingdom of Belgium), this title manifest the 'German' perspective - a pictorial digest. Evincing German offense against the BEF (British Expeditionary Force), French and Belgium armies at the Battle of Mons, heralding the mass exodus of British troops from region, the siege of Antwerp and the breakthrough toward Paris. Each successive chapter includes a short, introductory narrative, documenting holistically events and is accompanied by a wealth of fully captioned and rarely before seen photographs: over 500 images.

One hundred years ago, the United States Naval Academy, in Annapolis, Maryland, the cradle of Navy and Marine Corps leadership, was in the midst of the most remarkable period of growth and change in its history. Its campus, known simply as "The Yard," was expanded and the patchwork of old and dilapidated buildings housing it was replaced with magnificent new buildings befitting an institution of its caliber. This amazing renaissance fostered a golden age at the school in academics, training, athletics, and the advent of traditions that still exist today. Through images on over 475 postcards produced between 1900 and 1930, also the golden age of picture postcards, this book lets you see what the Academy and life there were like when midshipmen with names like Nimitz, Halsey, King, Spruance, Mitscher and Burke were among its residents.

This volume examines the rise and fall of sea powers, with a particular focus on the Asia-Pacific region. The chapters analyse what seapower means, and has meant, and its role, both historic and contemporary, in the rise and fall of great powers. The book focuses on the Asia-Pacific region, where the expansion of sea-based economies, together with burgeoning naval power are claimed by many to be in the process of transforming the world's future economic and security relationships. The book asks: to what extent is the notion of Asia Rising' reflected by and dependent on its developing seapower ? How seriously should we take the Chinese challenge to the Western maritime ascendancy of the past several hundred years, and what might be the consequences of this? To seek insight into contemporary and future developments from previous experience, several chapters will explore historical antecedents, not least the manner in which Britain coped with the transition of its maritime ascendancy into other hands. This book will be of much interest to students of naval power, Asian politics, strategic studies, war and conflict studies, IR and security studies.

Great power competition has returned to the world stage and the U.S. Navy finds itself in the forefront of U.S. efforts to demonstrate national resolve. The U.S. Navy: Case Studies in its Past, Present, and Future argues that the challenge of determining the future structure and operation of the fleet can be best achieved through an examination of its relevant past experience, as well as from current operations of the navy. After years of uncertainty as to its purpose and missions, the rise of China and Russian provocations now require U.S. officials to transform the fleet and its way of employing it. The contributors to this edition provide case studies of past, present, and future challenges that the U.S. Navy has, and will need to overcome as it reconsiders how it will restructure the fleet and reconsider its prevailing concepts of operations. Contributors examine past challenges to structuring the fleet and its prevailing concepts of operation. Based on this foundation, case studies propose how navy leadership should consider developing and employing the fleet in future. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Defense & Security Analysis.

As the U.S. Navy enters the twenty-first century, many of the ships, aircraft, weapons, and tactics it employed so successfully during the Cold War will no longer be cost-effective or even effective. Future battlefields will shift the locus of naval action from the high seas into littoral waters, demanding sustained operations in relatively narrow, shallow waters. Naval forces in the twenty-first century must not only meet the traditional requirements of command of the sea--ships, planes, troops, and bases--carrying out forward presence, crisis response, strategic deterrence, and sealift. They must now put these together to obtain the four key operational capabilities of littoral warfare: command, control, intelligence and surveillance, and communication; battlespace dominance; power projection; and force sustainment. The core of the new U.S. strategic concept is power projection, and it envisions naval forces directly leading Army and Air Force elements to influence events ashore, most probably in the Third World. And this navy must be cost effective.

HMS Dreadnought (1906) is closely associated with the age of empire, the Anglo-German antagonism and the naval arms race before the First World War. Yet it was also linked with a range of other contexts - political and cultural, national and international - that were central to the Edwardian period. The chapters in this volume investigate these contexts and their intersection in this symbolically charged icon of the Edwardian age. In reassessing the most famous warship of the period, this collection not only considers the strategic and operational impact of this 'all big gun' battleship, but also explores the many meanings Dreadnought had in politics and culture, including national and imperial sentiment, gender relations and concepts of masculinity, public spectacle and images of technology, and ideas about modernity and decline. The volume brings together historians from different backgrounds, working on naval and technological history, politics and international relations, as well as culture and gender. This diverse approach to the subject ensures that the book offers a timely revision of the Dreadnought and the Edwardian Age.'

A uniquely detailed study of a Japanese aircraft carrier that took part in the attack on Pearl Harbor, before being sunk at Midway. Hiryu was an aircraft carrier built for the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) during the 1930s. Her aircraft supported the Japanese invasion of French Indochina in mid-1940 and during the first month of the Pacific War, she took part in the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Battle of Wake Island. She supported the conquest of the Dutch East Indies in January 1942 and her aircraft bombed Darwin, Australia, and continued to assist in the Dutch East Indies campaign. In April, Hiryu's aircraft helped sink two British heavy cruisers and several merchant ships during the Indian Ocean raid. After a brief refit, Hiryu and three other fleet carriers of the First Air Fleet participated in the Battle of Midway in June 1942. After bombarding American forces on the atoll, the carriers were attacked by aircraft from Midway and the carriers USS Enterprise, Hornet, and Yorktown. Dive bombers from Yorktown and Enterprise crippled Hiryu and set her afire. She was scuttled the following day after it became clear that she could not be salvaged. The loss of Hiryu and three other IJN carriers at Midway was a crucial strategic defeat for Japan and contributed significantly to the Allies' ultimate victory in the Pacific. Drawing on new research and technology, this edition is the most comprehensive examination of Hiryu ever published. It includes a complete set of detailed line drawings with fully descriptive keys and full-color 3D artwork, supported by technical details, photographs, and text on the building of the ship and a record of the ship's service history.

This book examines the nature and character of naval expeditionary warfare, in particular in peripheral campaigns, and the contribution of such campaigns to the achievement of strategic victory. Naval powers, which can lack the massive ground forces to win in the main theatre, often choose a secondary theatre accessible to them by sea and difficult for their enemies to reach by land, giving the sea power and its expeditionary forces the advantage. The technical term for these theatres is 'peripheral operations.' The subject of peripheral campaigns in naval expeditionary warfare is central to the British, the US, and the Australian way of war in the past and in the future. All three are reluctant to engage large land forces because of the high human and economic costs. Instead, they rely as much as possible on sea and air power, and the latter is most often in the form of carrier-based aviation. In order to exert pressure on their enemies, they have often opened additional theaters in on-going, regional, and civil wars. This book contains thirteen case studies by some of the foremost naval historians from the United States, Great Britain, and Australia whose collected case studies examine the most important peripheral operations of the last two centuries. This book will be of much interest to students of naval warfare, military history, strategic studies and security studies.

Since the crucial maritime battles that were fought during the Second World War in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and the post-war period, which saw a naval standoff between a vast US navy and a growing Soviet navy, the focus of international maritime power has changed. Major maritime powers have deployed warships, aircraft carriers and heavy land forces around the globe, for purposes of diplomacy, such as in maintaining far-flung alliances; for deterrent purposes, such as in the Taiwan Straits; for warfighting, such as in its crucial support roles in recent conflicts in Afghanistan and both Gulf Wars; and for complex emergencies, such as tsunami and earthquake rescue in Indonesia and Pakistan. Increasingly, maritime power is employed in counter-terrorism, such as in joint patrols, counter-terrorism exercises and in intercepting ships suspected of carrying weapons of mass destruction. The Politics of Maritime Power is an exploration of the contemporary facets of maritime power, particularly as an instrument of the state, in the post-Second World War era. This reference volume is divided into four parts, with chapters exploring various aspects of modern maritime power written by maritime experts; a series of maps which show major maritime zones; a glossary which contains over 240 entries on various aspects of maritime power; and a detailed bibliography.

The Seven Years War (1756-63) was the most successful military affair in British History, as the Royal Navy triumphantly asserted its supremacy over France and Spain en route to its conquering of a vast overseas empire. This key volume describes the amphibious British war machine in its first major display of strength, chronicling it from the organization of its shipping to its major operations at sea, and the 1762 Havana expedition in particular. Demonstrating that the tide of British victories would have been impossible without a sophisticated logistics operation headquartered in and off the coasts of Europe and North America, author David Syrett then places this analysis in a comparative framework--evaluating the operations in relation to the British Navy's next major test, the triumph and failures of the American Revolutionary War.

This is the first academic study of India's emerging maritime strategy, and offers a systematic analysis of the interplay between Western military thought and Indian maritime traditions. By a quirk of historical fate, Europe embarked on its Age of Discovery just as the main Asian powers were renouncing the sea, ushering in centuries of Western dominance. In the 21st century, however, Asian states are once again resuming a naval focus, with both China and India dedicating some of their new-found wealth to building powerful navies and coast guards, and drawing up maritime strategies to govern the use of these forces. The United States, like the British Empire before it, is attempting to manage these rising sea powers while preserving its maritime primacy. This book probes how India looks at the sea, what kind of strategy and seagoing forces New Delhi may craft in the coming years, and how Indian leaders may use these forces. It examines the material dimension, but its major premise is that navies represent a physical expression of a society's history, philosophical traditions, and culture. This book, then, ventures a comprehensive appraisal of Indian maritime strategy. This book will be of interest to students of sea power, strategic studies, Indian politics and Asian Studies in general. James R. Holmes is an Associate Professor of Strategy at the U.S. Naval War College and a former U.S. Navy surface warfare officer. Toshi Yoshihara is an Associate Professor in the Strategy and Policy Department at the Naval War College. Andrew C. Winner is Professor in the Strategic Research Department at the U.S. Naval War College.

This is the first book to attempt a comprehensive analysis of the state of Spain's naval forces in the years following the defeat of the Great Armada in 1588 and during the seventeenth century. This was a period in which all of Europe's maritime powers were attaching increasing importance to naval warfare in their bid to topple Spain and to seize the rich pickings of her vast empire. The book is not, however, about naval battles and tactics. It is a study of the political, social, economic and technological conditions that influenced the character and performance of the Spanish navy. Based on hitherto untapped material in national and local Spanish archives, the book's findings throw new light on the conservation of Spain's timber resources, naval funding, recruitment and the status of the Spanish seaman.

Overturns the generally held view that the press gang was the main means of recruiting seamen by the British navy in the late eighteenth century. SHORTLISTED for the Society for Nautical Research's prestigious Anderson Medal. The press gang is generally regarded as the means by which the British navy solved the problem of recruiting enough seamen in the late eighteenth century. This book, however, based on extensive original research conducted primarily in a large number of ships' muster books, demonstrates that this view is false. It argues that, in fact, the overwhelming majority of seamen in the navy were there of their own free will. Taking a long view across the late eighteenth century but concentrating on the period of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars of 1793-1815, the book provides great detailon the sort of men that were recruited and the means by which they were recruited, and includes a number of individuals' stories. It shows how manpower was a major concern for the Admiralty; how the Admiralty put in place a rangeof recruitment methods including the quota system; how it worried about depleting merchant shipping of sufficient sailors; and how, although most seamen were volunteers, the press gang was resorted to, especially during the initial mobilisation at the beginning of wars and to find certain kinds of particularly skilled seamen. The book also makes comparisons with recruitment methods employed by the navies of other countries and by the British army. J. ROSS DANCY is Director of Graduate Studies in History and Assistant Professor of History at Sam Houston State University

'Of all the books about the ground war in the Pacific, (With the Old Breed) is the closest to a masterpiece.' - The New York Review of Books 'One of the most arresting documents in war literature.' - John Keegan, in The Second World War E.B. Sledge's memoir of his experience fighting in the South Pacific during World War II is powerful because of its honesty and compassion. With the Old Breed presents a stirring, personal account of the bravery of the Marines in the battles at Peleliu and Okinawa. Eugene Bondurant Sledge 'Sledgehammer' joined the Marines the year after the bombing of Pearl Harbour and from 1943 to 1946 endured the events recorded in this book. Sledge enlisted out of patriotism and youthful courage but once he landed on the beach at Peleliu, it was purely a struggle for survival. Based on the notes he kept on slips of paper tucked secretly away in his New Testament, he simply and directly recalls those long months, mincing no words and sparing no pain. The reality of battle meant unbearable heat, deafening gunfire, unimaginable brutality and, above all, constant fear. Sledge still has nightmares about 'the bloody, muddy month of May on Okinawa.' He also tellingly reveals the bonds of friendship formed that will never be severed. Sledge's account of other marines, even complete strangers, sets him apart as a memoirist of war. Read as sobering history or as high adventure, this is a moving chronicle of action and courage. About the Author E. B. Sledge was born and grew up in Mobile, Alabama. His father, a physician, taught him to hunt and to describe his surroundings. Sledge enlisted in the US Marine Corps and was sent to the Pacific Theatre. He fought at Peleliu and Okinawa where some of the fiercest battles of WWII took place. Although he survived it took him years to recover from the psychological wounds from that experience. He has since pursued his studies in all manner of subjects, earning a PhD in Zoology at the University of Florida.

Alan Careys new book, his fifth on USN and USMC bomber units of the Second World War, is the story of U.S. Navy Fleet Air Wing Seven (FAW-7) and the men who flew the Navy version of the Consolidated B-24 Liberator bomber out of Dunkeswell and Upottery, England during World War II. Navy PB4Y-1 Liberator squadrons were unlike their counterparts in the U.S. Armys 8th Air Force, who battled their way through thick flak and swarms of German fighters while flying to and from targets in continental Europe. The job of U.S. Navy PB4Y-1 Liberator aircrews was to keep German U-boats from successfully operating in the Bay of Biscay and the English Channel by going out day after day, often in miserable weather conditions, on unrelenting search and destroy missions. During the war, FAW-7 Liberators were responsible for the sinking of five U-boats and damaging many more.

This book covers the history of the U.S. Coast Guard from 1790 under Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, when the Service was called the U.S. Revenue Marine, to World War I, during which the naval agency, then called the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service, was combined with the U.S. Life-Saving Service to form the U.S. Coast Guard in 1915. The Coast Guard has historically served with or under the U.S. Navy in national defense missions. The maritime conflicts in that time frame include a war with France; War of 1812-1815; clashes with pirates, slave ships, and the Seminole Indians; War with Mexico; the Civil War of 1861-1865); Spanish-American War (1898); and World War I (1914-1918). The Great War involved the USCG and USN in domestic and maritime missions across the Atlantic to Europe, merchant ship convoy escorts, and anti-submarine warfare. The naval period surveys the evolution of wooden hulled, wind powered sailing ships to fuel powered iron hulled vessels. The historical geography of the wars is illustrated with maps created by retired IBM engineer and military historian David H. Allen.

* Biography of the 'father of the carrier task force' *Details Mitscher's incredible tactical skills *Paperback reprint of a classic work Air Admiral Marc Mitscher, who led the US attack across the Pacific in World War II, is a legend in naval circles for developing an entirely new concept of war at sea. His skills as a carrier tactician and genius for leading men rank him with the best World War II combat commanders, yet, because he shunned publicity and destroyed his private papers shortly before his death in 1947, his accomplishments are not widely known. Mitscher's sound decisions and successful tactics helped create the greatest striking weapon in history- the carrier force that could put up a thousand planes in half an hour, the task force that sank a thousand ships and destroyed the Japanese air force, the fleet that opened a direct route to Japan. Written by a former naval officer and well-known journalist, The Magnificent Mitscher tells the full story of this pioneer of naval aviation and his innovations. Theodore Taylor charts Mitscher's brilliant career from its very beginnings in 1916, when he became one of the US Navy's first pilots. On publication in1954, it was hailed as a first-class biography that set down the major role played by the admiral in developing the navy's air programme, and is also credited with providing a lively and detailed history of the progress of naval aviation. The author accomplishes all this with compassion, humour and deep respect for his subject. THEODORE TAYLOR, a merchant mariner during most of World War II, had become a naval officer by the war's end, serving in the Pacific. He is the author of more than thirty books, both fiction and non-fiction, and is a resident of Laguna Beach, California.

Alfred Thayer Mahan has been called America s nineteenth-century evangelist of sea power and the intellectual father of the modern US Navy. His theories have a timeless appeal, and Chinese analysts now routinely invoke Mahan s writings, exhorting their nation to build a powerful navy.

Economics is the prime motivation for maritime reorientation, and securing the sea lanes that convey foreign energy supplies and other commodities now ranks near or at the top of China s list of military priorities. This book is the first systematic effort to test the interplay between Western military thought and Chinese strategic traditions vis- -vis the nautical arena. It uncovers some universal axioms about how theories of sea power influence the behaviour of great powers and examines how Mahanian thought could shape China s encounters on the high seas. Empirical analysis adds a new dimension to the current debate over China s rise and its importance for international relations. The findings also clarify the possible implications of China s maritime rise for the United States, and illuminate how the two powers can manage their bilateral interactions on the high seas.

Chinese Naval Strategy in the 21st Century will be of much interest to students of naval history, Chinese politics and security studies.

This is the first academic study of India's emerging maritime strategy, and offers a systematic analysis of the interplay between Western military thought and Indian maritime traditions.

By a quirk of historical fate, Europe embarked on its Age of Discovery just as the main Asian powers were renouncing the sea, ushering in centuries of Western dominance. In the 21st century, however, Asian states are once again resuming a naval focus, with both China and India dedicating some of their new-found wealth to building powerful navies and coast guards, and drawing up maritime strategies to govern the use of these forces. The United States, like the British Empire before it, is attempting to manage these rising sea powers while preserving its maritime primacy.

This book probes how India looks at the sea, what kind of strategy and seagoing forces New Delhi may craft in the coming years, and how Indian leaders may use these forces. It examines the material dimension, but its major premise is that navies represent a physical expression of a society's history, philosophical traditions, and culture. This book, then, ventures a comprehensive appraisal of Indian maritime strategy.

This book will be of interest to students of sea power, strategic studies, Indian politics and Asian Studies in general.

James R. Holmes is an Associate Professor of Strategy at the U.S. Naval War College and a former U.S. Navy surface warfare officer. Toshi Yoshihara is an Associate Professor in the Strategy and Policy Department at the Naval War College. Andrew C. Winner is Professor in the Strategic Research Department at the U.S. Naval War College.

This edited volume explores stability, security, transition and reconstruction operations (SSTR), highlighting the challenges and opportunities they create for the US Navy.

The book argues that SSTR operations are challenging because they create new missions and basing modes, and signal a return to traditional naval methods of operation. Mission accomplishment requires collaboration with a wide range of actors representing governmental, non-governmental and commercial organizations, which often creates politically and bureaucratically charged issues for those involved. However, although from a traditional warfighting perspective, stability operations might be viewed as having little to do with preparing for high-intensity conventional combat, these kinds of operations in fact correspond to traditional missions related to diplomacy, engagement, maritime domain awareness, piracy and smuggling, and intervention to quell civil disturbances. SSTR operations can be therefore depicted as a return to traditional naval operations, albeit operations that might not be universally welcomed in all quarters.

In the late 1890s the Russian Empire sought to strengthen its presence in the Far East, China and Korea. Faced with a growing threat posed by the Imperial Japanese Navy, the Russians saw an urgent build-up of their naval forces in the region as an utmost priority. On February 20, 1898 Emperor Nicholas II approved a supplementary shipbuilding program "for the Far East", which would see the construction of six 5,000 - 6,000 ton cruisers, in addition to ships already being built under the 1895 program. The task to formulate technical requirement for the new vessels was delegated to the Maritime Technical Committee (Russian: MTK).

Rigidly organised and harshly disciplined, the Georgian Royal Navy was an orderly and efficient fighting force which played a major role in Great Britain's wars of the 18th and early 19th centuries.

This concise book explores what it was like to be a sailor in the Georgian Navy - focusing on the period from 1714 to 1820, this book examines the Navy within its wider historical, national, organisational and military context, and reveals exactly what it took to survive a life in its service. It looks at how a seaman could join the Royal Navy, including the notorious 'press gangs'; what was meant by 'learning the ropes'; and the severe punishments that could be levied for even minor misdemeanours as a result of the Articles of War. Military tactics, including manning the guns and tactics for fending off pirates are also revealed, as is the problem of maintaining a healthy diet at sea - and the steps that sailors themselves could take to avoid the dreaded scurvy.

Covering other fascinating topics as wide-ranging as exploration, mutiny, storms, shipwrecks, and women on board ships, this 'Sailor's Guide' explores the lives of the Navy's officers and sailors, using extracts from contemporary documents and writings to reconstruct their experiences in vivid detail.

The history of the Royal Navy flagships that led the fleet through the Cold War, ensured victory in the Falklands War, and saw action in Iraq and the Balkans. In 1945, at the end of World War II, the Royal Navy's carrier fleet proved essential to the post-war world. Royal Navy carriers fought in the Korean War with the UN fleet, in the debacle at Suez, and in British operations in the last days of Empire, in Malaya, Borneo and Aden. But most famously, they were the key to the Royal Navy's victory in the Falklands campaign, and they went on to fight in the two Iraq wars. Illustrated throughout with new profiles of the key carriers and their development, as well as a cutaway of HMS Victorious and superb new illustrations of the carriers in action, this book explains how the Royal Navy's air power changed throughout the Cold War and beyond. Renowned naval historian Angus Konstam explains how the World War II carriers were rebuilt in a pioneering modernization that allowed them to operate a new generation of naval jets. As carriers became more expensive to operate, the Royal Navy had to scrap its conventional fast jets and introduce a new generation of light carriers designed for the innovative Harrier 'jump jet'. When the Falklands War broke out, it was one of these new carriers and one veteran carrier from World War II that gave the Task Force the fighters it needed to defend itself in hostile waters and retake the islands. Covering a period of dramatic change for the Royal Navy, this book is a history of the Royal Navy's most important ships throughout the Cold War, the retreat from Empire, and the Falklands and Iraq wars, up to the moment Royal Navy fixed-wing air power was temporarily axed in 2010.