The Fairbairn-Sykes Commando dagger has become iconic as the most widely recognized fighting knife in the world. The origins of the dagger can be traced to Shanghai in the 1930s where W. E. Fairbairn and US Marine officers including Sam Yeaton carried out experiments in developing what they considered the perfect knife for close combat.
When Fairbairn and Sykes became instructors for the Commandos, they refined the design which would evolve into the classic Fairbairn-Sykes dagger. The dagger was first used during early Commando raids into occupied Europe but saw action in every theatre of World War II. US Rangers and Marines who had trained with the Commandos took their Fairbairn-Sykes daggers home which also influenced the development of American Special Forces daggers. The Fairbairn-Sykes remained in use with many units after the war, and has become a symbol of commando and special forces units throughout the world.

The D-Day landings of 6 June 1944 were the largest amphibious military operation ever mounted. During the late Spring and early summer of 1944 the roads and ports of southern England were thronged with the troops, vehicles and ships of the invasion force. The greatest armada the world had ever seen had been assembled to transport US 1st Army and British 2nd Army across the narrow strip of the Channel and open the long-awaited second front against Hitler's Third Reich. This book reveals the events of that single day on Utah beach, one of the two US landings.

In less than one day, the might of the Imperial Japanese Navy was destroyed and four of her great aircraft carriers sank burning into the dark depths of the Pacific. Utilizing the latest research and detailed combat maps, this book tells the dramatic story of the Japanese assault on Midway Island and the American ambush that changed the face of the Pacific war. With sections on commanders, opposing forces, and a blow-by-blow account of the action, this volume gives a complete understanding of the strategy, the tactics, and the human drama that made up the Midway campaign, and its place as the turning point in the Pacific war.

In this book Steven J Zaloga offers a fascinating comparison of the combat performance of the two most important tanks involved in the crucial fighting of 1944, the Sherman and the Panther. Examining the design and development of both tanks, Zaloga notes the obvious superiority that the Panther had over the Sherman and how the highly engineered German tank was eventually beaten back, not necessarily by the improvements made to the Sherman, but rather by the superior numbers of tanks that the Allies were able to put into the field.
Putting the reader into the heart of this battle between quality and quantity Zaloga examines the tactical intricacies of the battles between these two rivals. Using a compelling account of the ferocious fighting in the Ardennes region to explain the successes and failures of each tank he also highlights the fact that a tank can only be as good as its crew, weighing up the impact of low morale, high cost and mediocre crew training on the Panthers superiority. Packed with full-colour battlescenes, technical drawings, photographs, digital gunsight views, extracts from crew training manuals and real combat reports, this book brings to life the titanic battles between the Sherman and the Panther.

The battle for Guadalcanal that lasted from August 1942 to February 1943 was the first major American counteroffensive against the Japanese in the Pacific. The battle of Savo Island on the night of 9 August 1942, saw the Japanese inflict a sever defeat on the Allied force, driving them away from Guadalcanal and leaving the just-landed marines in a perilously exposed position. This was the start of a series of night battles that culminated in the First and Second battles of Guadalcanal, fought on the nights of 13 and 15 November. One further major naval action followed, the battle of Tassafaronga on 30 November 1942, when the US Navy once again suffered a severe defeat, but this time it was too late to alter the course of the battle as the Japanese evacuated Guadalcanal in early February 1943.This title will detail the contrasting fortunes experienced by both sides over the intense course of naval battles around the island throughout the second half of 1942 that did so much to turn the tide in the Pacific.

At 1345hrs on 6 October 1973, Israeli spotters in the observation post atop Mount Hermon saw Syrian gunners below them removing the camouflage nets from their guns. Ten minutes later shells began to rain down on Israeli positions all along the Golan Heights - The Yom Kippur War had begun. The shock Syrian attack caught the Israelis by surprise and by the afternoon of 7 October a Syrian brigade was less than 10km from the Sea of Galilee. Simon Dunstan describes in detail how amid desperate and bitter fighting the Israeli forces managed to turn the tide on the Golan Heights.

Operation Husky, the Anglo-American amphibious landings on Sicily in July 1943 were the proving ground for all subsequent Allied amphibious operations including Salerno, Anzio, and D-Day in Normandy. Husky's strategic objective was to knock Italy out of the war, a mission that ultimately proved successful. But it also demonstrated the growing ability of Britain and the United States to conduct extremely complex combined-arms attacks involving not only amphibious landings, but also airborne assaults. It was in many ways the precursor of all modern joint operations through the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as two different armies and navies with their own methods of command and control adjusted their practices to conduct a harmonious operation. This stood in stark contrast to the increasingly dysfunctional German-Italian alliance which finally broke down on Sicily.
Not only did the Sicily operation represent a watershed in tactical development of combined arms tactics, it was also an important test for future Allied joint operations. Senior British commanders left the North African theater with a jaundiced and dismissive view of the combat capabilities of the inexperienced US Army after the debacle at Kasserine Pass in Tunisia in February 1943. Sicily was a demonstration that the US Army had rapidly learned its lessons and was now capable of fighting as a co-equal of the British Army.
The Sicily campaign contained a measure of high drama as Patton took the reins of the Seventh US Army and bent the rules of the theater commander in a bold race to take Palermo on the northern Sicilian coast. Patton was determined to prove the ability of the US Army after Kasserine in the hands of a skilled tactical commander. When stiff German resistance halted Montgomery's main assault to Messina through the mountains, Patton was posed to be the first to reach the key Sicilian port and end the campaign.
The Sicily campaign contains a fair amount of controversy as well including the disastrous problems with early airborne assaults and the Allied failure to seal the straits of Messina, allowing the Germans to withdraw many of their best forces.

Osprey's examination of the campaign at Nagashino in 1575. When Portuguese traders took advantage of the constant violence in Japan to sell the Japanese their first firearms, one of the quickest to take advantage of this new technology was the powerful daimyo Oda Nobunaga. In 1575 the impetuous Takeda Katsuyori laid siege to Nagashino castle, a possession of Nobunaga's ally, Tokugawa Ieyasu. An army was despatched to relieve the siege, and the two sides faced each other across the Shidarahara. The Takeda samurai were brave, loyal and renowned for their cavalry charges, but Nobunaga, counting on Katsuyori's impetuosity, had 3,000 musketeers waiting behind prepared defences for their assault. The outcome of this clash of tactics and technologies was to change the face of Japanese warfare forever.

The German Tiger heavy tank was a monster of a machine that dominated the battlefields of Europe. One of the most feared weapons of World War II, the Tiger gained an aura of invincibility that was only shattered by the introduction of the Sherman Firefly during the summer of 1944. Specifically designed by the British to combat the Tiger, the Sherman Firefly was based on the standard American M4A4 Sherman medium tank, but was fitted with a powerful 17-pounder gun which made it a deadly opponent for the Tiger.
This book describes the design and development of these two fierce opponents, analyzing their strengths and weaknesses and assessing their tactics, weaponry and training. Innovative gun-sight artwork puts the reader "inside" the tanks during famous real-life battle scenarios, including the infamous Panzer ace Michael Wittman leading four Tigers into battle against eight Fireflies, a clash of steel that was a victory not only for superior Allied numbers, but also for Allied tactics and engineering.

In the darkest days of World War II, the British planned a daring airborne operation to capture the secret of the new German radar. Lead by Major John Frost, a company of paratroopers dropped into Bruneval on the French coast, and quickly neutralized a small German garrison. Then began a desperate fight for time as the British tried to dismantle the German radar and evacuate back to England, as ever more German units converged on their position. Using artwork, photographs, and detailed maps, this action-packed narrative puts the reader in the planning room and on the battlefield of one of the greatest raids of World War II.

An examination of the 'small boat' war between the Germans and the British in the English Channel. During the Second World War, German E-Boats were so active in the English Channel that the narrow stretch of water became known as 'E-Boat Alley'. To counter the threat of these E-Boats, Britain brought its coastal forces to bear - flotillas of small Motor Torpedo and Gun Boats (MTBs and MGBs) and Motor Launches (MLs). As the Germans sought to maintain their supremacy in Channel waters, they continued to develop their E-Boat designs to accommodate more armor and more firepower. Rather than matching the newer E-Boats for armament, the British developed several types to fulfill the varied roles for which the Kriegsmarine were attempting to use the E-Boat. Illustrated with high-quality photographs and battlescene artworks, this book details this developing conflict, examining the evolution of the boats involved, and covering their battles from fights in the Thames Estuary to the build-up for D-Day.

In July 1944 of World War II (1939-1945), Operation Cobra broke the stalemate in Normandy and sent the Allies racing across France. The Allied commanders ignored Paris in their planning for this campaign, considering that the risk of intense street fighting and heavy casualties outweighed the city's strategic importance. However, Charles de Gaulle persuaded the Allied commanders to take direct action to liberate his nation's capital. Steven J Zaloga first describes the operations of Patton's Third Army as it advanced towards Paris before focusing on the actions of the Resistance forces inside the city and of the Free French armored division that fought its way in and joined up with them to liberate it on August 24. De Gaulle could then proclaim, Paris liberated! and one of the world's loveliest cities had survived Hitler's strident command that it should be held at all costs or reduced to rubble.

Robert A. Forczyk provides a riveting and intense description of the design and development of these two deadly opponents, the Panther and the T-34, analyzing their strengths and weaknesses and describing their tactics, weaponry and training. Moreover he gives an insight into the lives of the tank crews themselves, who were caught up in the largest land conflict of World War II, in some of the most important engagements in the history of warfare.
Innovative digital artwork and first-person perspectives place the reader in the midst of a duel between the titans of the Soviet and German armed forces in a ruthless and relentless death match that would determine the war on the Eastern Front and, indeed, the fate of Nazi Germany.

The ashigaru were the foot soldiers of old Japan. Although recruited first to swell an army's numbers and paid only by loot, the samurai began to realise their worth, particularly with arquebuses and spears, until well-trained ashigaru made up a vital part of any samurai army. This book tells the story of the ashigaru for the first time, their origins, recruitment training and use in war. Stephen Turnbull draws on previously untranslated Japanese sources and unpublished illustrations that show the range of ashigaru activity, from sailors to catapult artillery men as well as the disciplined ranks of warriors that they had become.

Osprey's study of the conflict between Japan and the United States during World War II (1939-1945). The island of Betio in the Tarawa Atoll was defended by the elite troops of the Special Naval Landing Force, whose commander, Admiral Shibasaki, boasted that the Americans could not take Tarawa with a million men in a hundred years. In a pioneering amphibious invasion, the Marines of the 2nd Division set out to prove him wrong, overcoming serious planning errors to fight a 76-hour battle of unprecedented savagery. The cost would be more than 3000 Marine casualties at the hands of a garrison of some 3700. The lessons learned would dispel forever any illusions that Americans had about the fighting quality of the Japanese.

On their western flank, the Allied landings on D-Day combined a parachute drop by the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions with an amphibious assault on "Utah" Beach by the US 4th Infantry Division. The landings came ashore in the wrong place but met weaker German resistance as a result. The heaviest fighting took place inland where the badly scattered paratroopers gradually gathered in small groups and made for their objectives. This book traces the story of D-Day on Utah beach, revealing how the infantry pushed inland and linked up with the Airborne troops in a beachhead five miles deep. Now the battle to break out and seize the key port of Cherbourg could begin.

On the eastern flank of the Allied landings in Normandy was Sword Beach, which was the responsibility of the British 3rd Division. Their objectives for D-Day were to join up with the Canadians landing on Juno and capture the town of Caen. In addition, they were to link up with the British airborne forces who were to secure the eastern flank of the beachhead. The leading waves landed at 7.30am and managed to get off the beach without heavy German resistance. This book looks at how the severe congestion on Sword Beach allowed the defending German forces, particularly the 21st Panzer Division, valuable time to react, preventing Caen from being taken on the first day, where much blood was shed before it finally fell.