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Franco'S Pirates
E.R Hooton
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R707
Discovery Miles 7 070
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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The Spanish Civil War was won and lost upon the high seas. It was
won because the Nationalists had an uninterrupted flow of men and
materials while Republican sea lanes were attacked by Fascist
warships, submarines, and aircraft – the pirates of the title.
These attacks also involved dozens of foreign merchantmen and
warships, including American, as well as hundreds of men, women,
and boys. The worst affected was the British merchant marine, which
dominated Spanish trade – some owners used rust buckets to
maximise profits in a trade, which resulted in the loss of 66
British lives. The naval element of the Spanish Civil War began
with a rebellion followed by a mutiny and a massacre. Both the
German and Italian navies became involved in the naval war,
attacking Spanish ships and then British warships and merchantmen.
A blockade in the north led to confrontations between the Royal
Navy and Nationalist Navy, the mining of a British liner and tales
of daring among determined British master mariners. Later in the
war there were attacks by Italian surface warships, submarines, and
aircraft against foreign shipping in the Mediterranean and Aegean
leading to the British and French threatening pirate submarines.
This is a story of exploitation, heroism, chauvinism, piracy,
international inaction, and espionage which has never been told. It
includes details of such things as the first aerial campaign
against shipping and the first operational use of sonar against a
submarine.
The fuse to the First World War was lit in the Balkans where
simmering hatreds exploded into violence. Like a string of
firecrackers, these hatreds had been fuelled by attacks on the
Turkish Ottoman Empire in the previous few years. From 1911-1912,
Italy seized Libya. In 1912, the Balkan states united to drive
Turkey out of Europe in the First Balkans War, and in the following
year in the Second Balkans War, turned on each other in a division
of the spoils which allowed Turkey to retain a foothold in Europe.
This was a war of land campaigns, sea battles and amphibious
operations in which the new military technology was first used.
Submarine and aircraft attacked ships, aircraft made reconnaissance
flights and bombed troops while even electronic warfare was used.
It also saw mirror images of the events in the First World War;
Bulgarians driven from Salonika where an Allied army would later be
contained and Turkish troops held back in the Dardanelles, their
guns driving off a naval task force. These now forgotten wars were
the overture to the First World War and yet they have overtones a
century later.The First World War saw echoes of these campaigns in
Salonika and especially in the Dardanelles, while the ethnic
tensions would erupt into further bloodshed after the Cold War
ended as Yugoslavia collapsed during the 1990s.
There has not been an in-depth history of the Luftwaffe published
for many years and and this scholarly one-volume survey of the
history of the Luftwaffe will become the leading reference work on
the subject. The author is a well-respected military, aviation and
naval historian, who has been researching this subject for many
years in order to bring the latest information on and analysis of
the Luftwaffe together in this work of reference. The book covers
the history, campaigns, strategies, commanders and personalities of
the Luftwaffe in depth as well as looking at the aircraft, although
it does not cover aircraft types in detail. It covers the following
specific areas: the prewar development of the Luftwaffe from its
beginnings in the early 1930s, the attack on Poland, 1939, the
campaigns in the West, 1940, the Battle of Britain, the
Mediterranean and North African campaigns up to 1942/3 and the
Eastern Front to Stalingrad, the Eastern Front to the end of the
war, the defence of the Reich, the war against Allied shipping and
the last days of the war. This history of the Luftwaffe gives a
fresh and detailed insight into the dramatic rise and fall of one
the world's most formidable air forces. Alongside the detailed
analysis of campaigns and strategies, the role of significant
individuals in shaping the Luftwaffe's destiny is also followed so
that human side of the story is given due prominence in this
history.
The Iran-Iraq War was one of the bloodiest conflicts of the 20th
Century and accidentally created the current nightmare of Islamic
fundamentalist terrorism. There have been many books on the
conflict but this is the first detailed military history using
materials from both sides, as well as materials obtained from US
Intelligence circles and British Governmental archives. It provides
a unique insight into a war which began through miscalculation and
rapidly escalated into the longest conventional conflict in the
post-Second World War era. Part 4 in this mini-series coversthe
warfare between Iran and Iraq on the Central and Northern Fronts.
Difficult terrain made it problematic for either side to assemble
overwhelming superiority. Following initial Iraqi attacks that
seized some territory, the Iranians began gradually nibbling back
until achieving some success in the centre, in 1982. Subsequently,
the Central Front saw only minor conventional battles until Iraq
launched several major blows in 1988. In the north, fighting
primarily revolved around several Kurdish insurgencies in northern
Iraq, and culminated in the horror of the Halabcheh gas attack. The
final campaign of the war saw Iraq-supported Iranian emigres
launching a spectacular, but also a swiftly-crushed, invasion of
their homeland.
The air war over the Steppes was more than a brutal clash in which
might alone triumphed. It was a conflict that saw tactical and
technological innovation as the Soviet air force faced off against
Herman Goering's Luftwaffe. As Germany and the Soviet Union battled
for victory on the Eastern Front they had to overcome significant
strategic and industrial problems, as well as fighting against the
extreme weather conditions of the East. These factors combined with
the huge array of aircraft used on the Eastern Front to create one
of the most compelling conflicts of the war. Told primarily from
the strategic and command perspective, this account offers a
detailed analysis of this oft-overlooked air war, tracing the
clashes between Germany and the Soviet Union over the course of
World War II. Historical photographs complement the examination as
author E. R. Hooton explores these epic aerial battles between the
Third Reich and the Soviet Union.
The Iran-Iraq War was one of the bloodiest conflicts of the 20th
Century and accidentally created the current nightmare of Islamic
fundamentalist terrorism. There have been many books on the
conflict but this is the first detailed military history using
materials from both sides, as well as materials obtained from US
Intelligence circles and British Governmental archives. It provides
a unique insight into a war which began through miscalculation and
rapidly escalated into the longest conventional conflict in the
post-Second World War era. The third volume covers the last two
years of the war on the Southern front, where Iranians made their
last supreme effort to break through Iraqi lines during the winter
of 1986-1987. Iraqi defences just about held. For a year, there was
an ominous silence, but then Iraq launched a series of devastating
blows that recovered the Faw Peninsula, pulverised weakly-occupied
Iranian positions, and drove the frontlines back to the
international border. Iran was left with no option but to sue for
peace.
Volume 2 takes up the account after Iraq withdrew from Khuzestan
and is based upon material from both sides, from US Intelligence
data, British Government documents and secret Iraqi files. Iraq's
withdrawal exposed the great southern city of Basra to Iranian
attack but it was shielded by fortifications based upon a huge
anti-tank ditch, the so-called Fish Lake, which the Iranians tried
to storm in the summer of 1982. This bloody failure left Tehran in
a position where prestige prevented a withdrawal into Iran but the
armed forces lacked the resources to bring the conflict to a
favourable conclusion. During the next four years the Iranians
tried to outflank the Fish Lake defences initially through the
marshes in the north and finally through an attack on the Fao
Peninsula which increased national prestige but was a strategic
failure and paved the way for Iraq's massive victories in 1988.
This followed a series of successful defensive battles in which the
Iranians were driven back with great loss. This account describes
the battles in greater detail than before and, by examining them,
provides unique insights and ends many of the myths which are
repeated in many other accounts of this conflict.
During the Iran-Iraq war, hundreds of merchant vessels were
attacked, more than 400 seamen killed and millions of dollars'
worth of damages were suffered by owners, charterers and insurers.
In the most sustained assault on merchant shipping since the Second
World War, the control of shipping routes, destruction of enemy and
enemy-allied ships, and the protection of oil exports, were key
objectives.
These campaigns touched the economic and security interests of the
Gulf states by threatening their exports and highlighting their
political and military vulnerability. The ripples of the tanker
wars extended well beyond the region with attacks on vessels with
foreign flags which invoked international concern and drew in
foreign naval forces.
Spain in Arms is a new military history of the Spanish Civil War.
It examines how the Spanish Civil War conflict developed on the
battlefield through the prism of eight campaigns between 1937-1939
and shows how many accounts of military operations during this
conflict are based upon half-truths and propaganda. The book is
based upon nearly 60 years of extensive research into the Spanish
Civil War, augmented by information from specialised German,
Italian and Russian works. The Italian campaign against the Basques
on the Northern Front in 1937 was one of the most spectacular
Nationalist successes of the Civil War, with 60,000 prisoners
taken. This is also the first book to quote secret data about
Italian air operations intercepted by the British. The figures
intercepted by the British show the Italians flew 1,215 sorties and
dropped 231 tons of bombs during the campaign, whilst also
suffering the heaviest losses. It also demonstrates how the
Nationalists won not simply by benefitting from a cornucopia of
modern arms from the Fascist powers but by using its limited
resources to maximum effect. Spain in Arms reveals the Nationalist
battlefield superiority in terms of training and overall command,
and the Republic's corresponding weaknesses in the same fields. The
Republican Brunete and Belchite offensives of 1937 are described in
detail, from the weapons they carried and the tactics they employed
to the dynamic Nationalist response and reaction of the generals.
This book also explores how the extent of foreign intervention on
both sides has been greatly exaggerated throughout history and
provides the first accurate information on this military
intervention, using British and French archives to produce a
radically different but more accurate account of the battles and
the factors and men who shaped them. Hooton finally gives the
historical context and operational implications of the battlefield
events to provide a link between the First and Second World Wars.
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