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This edited volume comprises a series of essays about Patrick
Maynard Stewart Blackett, one of the greatest scientists of the
20th century, as well as a prominent figure in the Royal Navy and
British politics.
This edited volume comprises a series of essays about Patrick
Maynard Stewart Blackett, one of the greatest scientists of the
20th century, as well as a prominent figure in the Royal Navy and
British politics.
Blackett was battle-hardened in World War I and contributed
directly to the Allied victory in World War II. Showing precocious
ability in mechanical invention and benefiting from the Royal
Navy's revolutionary education - the most advanced available in
Britain in the early 1900s - Blackett had gone to war in 1914 aged
16. Escaping death and drowning, he saw action in two major
battles, and spent several gruelling years on patrol in small
ships. When the Royal Navy sent its young officers to be
"civilized" at Cambridge after World War I, Blackett decided to
stay on.
Blackett would go on to become one of the most remarkable
scientists of his generation, winning the Nobel Prize for physics
in 1948 for his work on cloud chambers. He also helped prepare
Britain for war, working with Henry Tizard in the 1930s on the
Committee for the Scientific Survey of Air Defence, which led to
the installation of radar stations, and later developing the
science of operational research, which helped defeat the U-boat
menace. Although not a pacifist, he was strongly opposed both to
nuclear weapons and to indiscriminate bombing, on grounds of
morality and efficacy. Blackett would go on to advise Harold Wilson
in Britain and Jawarharlal Nehru in India on defence and science
policy. Throughout his life, Blackett would keep the commanding
presence and habits of a naval officer, which helped him apply his
influence.
BRITISH-BORN MARY LINDELL, Comtesse de Milleville, was one of the
most colourful and courageous agents of the Second World War, yet
her story has almost been forgotten. Evoking the spirit of Edith
Cavell, she led an escape line for patriotic Frenchmen and British
soldiers. After her imprisonment, escape to England, a secret
return to France and another arrest, she began to witness the
horrors of German-run prisons and concentration camps. In April
1945, a score of British and American women emerged from the
'Women's Hell' - Ravensbruck concentration camp - who had been kept
alive by the willpower and the strength of one woman: Mary Lindell.
To counter German claims that they had no British or American
prisoners, Mary smuggled out a plea for rescue and produced her
list from her pinafore pocket, compiled in secret from the camp
records. This vital list contained the names of captured women,
many of whom were agents of British Military Intelligence, the
Special Operations Executive or the French Resistance. Poignantly
supported by first-hand testimony, Lindell's List tells the story
of Mary Lindell's heroic leadership and the endurance of a group of
women who defied the Nazis in the Second World War.
David Balme will be forever known as the 20-year-old hero who, on 9
May 1941, boarded a German U-boat in mid-Atlantic, and captured one
of the greatest secrets of the Second World War. This capture - or
'pinch' as it was known within secret, inner circles - changed the
course of the Battle of the Atlantic and shortened the war itself.
Balme was part of a team comprising officers and men of the Third
Escort Group ably led by Commander Joe Baker Cresswell, also
commander of HMS Bulldog, who shared the danger with other unsung
heroes such as Lieutenant Commander George Dodds. Balme was tasked
with taking the Bulldog's whaler and a small party to board the
U-boat U-110 which had been disabled. However he was alone when
initially boarding, entering and searching the U-boat. This put him
in a vulnerable position while descending into the vessel - he
risked being shot by any German submariner that may have remained
or blown-up by a booby-trap device. Furthermore he could have
drowned when Bulldog disappeared into the mists of the Atlantic to
hunt another U-boat, as U-110 could have plummeted into the depths
at any time.However, where others tried and failed or tragically
lost their lives, Balme and his boarding party succeeded
magnificently in capturing an entire Enigma machine, the essential
rotors and months' worth of associated cipher material. This was an
absolute gift to the code breakers at Bletchley Park who were able
to read all the secret German naval signal traffic for some months
and it enabled them to read virtually the whole of the traffic for
the rest of the war and with little delay. The capture was kept so
secret that few even on the British side knew about it - not even
the Americans were told what had been achieved after they entered
the war. Balme returned from the war and never spoke about the
secret capture which he believed would be hidden forever. The story
of the capture and ransack of U-110 is told for the first time in
the words and letters of David Balme, his captain Joe Baker
Cresswell, George Dodds and others who took part in the most
important submarine capture of the whole war.Besides the capture of
U-110, Balme enjoyed an astonishing variety of wartime experience
including the Spanish Civil War, the Palestine Patrol, the sinking
of HMS Courageous, the Battle of Convoy KJF3, the fight with the
heavy cruiser Hipper, the Battle of Cape Spartivento, the Battle of
Convoy OB318, being sunk during Operation Harpoon, the air war in
the Western Desert, the high level diplomacy of Prime Minister
Winston Churchill and pioneering work as a Fighter Direction
Officer in the war against Japan.
The autobiography of Tony Bentley-Buckle, a child of the Empire who
was left to grow up in the care of maiden aunts. Having joined the
Royal Navy before the war, he found himself on the Northern Patrol
during the blockade of Germany and as a teenager in command of
captured ships. When he brought a ship through the minefields into
Scapa Flow, the young Midshipman Bentley-Buckle was interviewed by
the famously ferocious Admirax Max Horton who recommended him for
advanced promotion. In a fit of derring-do he volunteered for
'special service' without knowing what this meant and began
training for one of Britain's secret navies. As a beach commando he
was one of the first ashore at the Allied landings on Sicily and
one of the first Allied officers to cross the Straits of Messina.
On Reggio beach he became one of the few people to order General
Montgomery to stop talking and not to block the exit of the beach!
He was soon seconded even deeper into British secret services when
he was lent to MI9, the escape and evasion agency, helping to
rescue hundreds of British prisoners of war in Italy. He was
captured in a fierce hand-to-hand battle with the Germans, escaped,
recaptured and was badly-beaten, eventually reaching
Prisoner-of-War Camp 'Marlag O'. There he helped organise one the
cheekiest escapes from a prisoner-of-war camp by making the eyes
for a dummy known as 'Albert RN'. Post-war he learned to fly,
sailed a small boat to East Africa and founded a shipping empire
and an airline. This is a remarkable and exciting true story
including escape and evasion behind enemy lines in Italy,
Yugoslavia and Germany; life in a prisoner-of-war camp and
adventure in the Indian Ocean.
An illustrated history of battleships, their origins and evolution,
this meticulously researched book begins with a history of the
battleship, from the first ironclad wooden-hulled ships of the 19th
century to the revolutionary Dreadnoughts of World War I and the
mighty battleships and battle cruisers of World War II. It includes
a country-by-country directory of battleships, with details about
each vessel’s history, construction, appearance and function.
Featuring more than 150 ships – including Dreadnought, Hood, New
Jersey, Bismarck and Nagato – specification boxes provide
at-a-glance information about each ship’s country of origin,
launch date, size, weight, armament, power, performance and
complement, and includes facts and anecdotes about the famous
battles and naval operations in which these ships played a role.
Featuring over 550 photographs from naval and military sources
worldwide, many rarely seen before, this is a must-have reference
book for everyone interested in the battleships that have helped to
make history.
The World War II codebreaking station at Bletchley is well-known
and its activities documented in detail. Its decryption
capabilities were vital to the war effort, significantly aiding
Allied victory. But where did the messages being deciphered come
from in the first place? This is the extraordinary untold story of
the Y-Service, a secret even more closely guarded than Bletchley
Park. The Y-Service was the code for the chain of wireless
intercept stations around Britain and all over the world. A few
hundreds of wireless operators, many of them who were civilians,
listened to German, Italian and Japanese radio networks and
meticulously logged everything they heard. Some messages were then
used tactically but most were sent on to Station X - Bletchley Park
- where they were deciphered, translated and consolidated to build
a comprehensive overview of the enemy's movements and intentions.
Peter Hore delves into the fascinating history of the Y-service,
with particular reference to the girls of the Women's Royal Naval
Service: Wrens who escaped from Singapore to Colombo as the war
raged, only to be torpedoed in the Atlantic on their way back to
Britain; the woman who had a devastatingly true premonition that
disaster would strike on her way to Gibraltar; the Australian who
went from being captain of the English Women's Cricket team to a
WWII Wren to the head of Abbotleigh girls school in Sydney; how the
Y-service helped to hunt the German battleship Bismarck in the
North Atlantic, and how it helped to torpedo a Japanese cruiser in
the Indian Ocean. Together, these incredible stories build a
picture of World War II as it has never been viewed before.
...It is remarkable that one man should have been involved in so
much action in so few years...I commend his biography to the
reader: ...by any standard he was a hero, and he tells his life's
story with modesty and humour. Extract from the Foreword by Admiral
Lord Boyce Captain Mervyn Wingfield was one of the last of his
generation of submariners who made their reputation in the Second
World War. Pre-war he had served on the China station and lived the
riotous life of a young officer; in the war he commanded three
submarines, Umpire, Sturgeon and Taurus, survived a collision in
the North Sea, spent a winter in the Arctic, penetrated the
Norwegian fjords submerged through a minefield, surfaced off St
Nazaire in view of German guns to act as a navigation marker for
the raiding force, fought cavalry in the northern Aegean, and
later, off Penang, was the first British submariner to sink a
Japanese submarine - and barely survived the subsequent, vicious
counterattack after Taurus was severely damaged and became stuck in
the mud at the bottom. Any one of these incidents would have
merited a place for Wingfield in the history of naval warfare and
the pantheon of submarine heroes. The Royal Navy's most senior
submariner, Admiral Lord Boyce, notes in his Foreword that the
diesel-powered submarines in which both men served were not so
different, but the risks which Wingfield took in wartime were
greater and Lord Boyce admired the way in which Wingfield led his
crew and was loved by them. Many men were burned-out by the war,
but in the postwar years Wingfield enjoyed a successful peacetime
career in the Royal Navy where, finally, his personal qualities and
his diplomacy were put to the test as a naval attache. In
retirement Wingfield was well-known for hosting lively beef and
Stilton lunches at the London Boat Show! He was also one of the
last of the generations of Anglo-Irish families who served the
Crown and provided officers and men for the Army and the Navy, and
his story additionally gives some insights into his early days,
especially with regard to being a young officer in the Royal Navy
in the 1930s.
The renowned Oxford Chemistry Primer series, which provides focused
introductions to a range of important topics in chemistry, has been
refreshed and updated to suit the needs of today's students,
lecturers, and postgraduate researchers. The rigorous, yet
accessible, treatment of each subject area is ideal for those
wanting a primer in a given topic to prepare them for more advanced
study or research. Moreover, cutting-edge examples and applications
throughout the texts show the relevance of the chemistry being
described to current research and industry. The learning features
provided, including questions at the end of every chapter and
online multiple-choice questions, encourage active learning and
promote understanding. Furthermore, frequent diagrams, margin
notes, further reading, and glossary definitions all help to
enhance a student's understanding of these essential areas of
chemistry. NMR: The Toolkit describes succinctly the range of NMR
techniques commonly used in modern research to probe the structures
and properties of molecules in liquids. Emphasis is placed
throughout on how these experiments actually work, giving a unique
perspective on this powerful experimental tool. Online Resource
Centre The Online Resource Centre to accompany NMR The Toolkit: How
Pulse Sequences Work features: For registered adopters of the text:
* Figures from the book available to download For students: * Full
worked solutions to the end-of-chapter exercises
The renowned Oxford Chemistry Primers series, which provides
focused introductions to a range of important topics in chemistry,
has been refreshed and updated to suit the needs of today's
students, lecturers, and postgraduate researchers. The rigorous,
yet accessible, treatment of each subject area is ideal for those
wanting a primer in a given topic to prepare them for more advanced
study or research. Moreover, cutting-edge examples and applications
throughout the texts show the relevance of the chemistry being
described to current research and industry. The learning features
provided, including questions at the end of every chapter and
online multiple-choice questions, encourage active learning and
promote understanding. Furthermore, frequent diagrams, margin
notes, and glossary definitions all help to enhance a student's
understanding of these essential areas of chemistry. Nuclear
Magnetic Resonance offers a concise and accessible introduction to
the physical principles of liquid-state NMR, a powerful technique
for probing molecular structures. Examples, applications, and
exercises are provided throughout to enable beginning
undergraduates to get to grips with this important analytical
technique. Online Resource Centre The Online Resource Centre to
accompany Nuclear Magnetic Resonance features: For registered
adopters of the text: * Figures from the book available to download
For students: * Multiple-choice questions for self-directed
learning * Full worked solutions to the end-of-chapter exercises
The Trafalgar Chronicle is a prime source of information as well as
the publication of choice for new research about the Georgian navy,
sometimes also loosely referred to as Nelson's Navy', though its
scope reaches out to include all the sailing navies of the period.
A central theme is the Trafalgar campaign and the epic battle of 21
October 1805 involving British, French and Spanish ships, and some
30,000 men of a score of nations. The next edition, new series No
4, will be themed on the people who knew Nelson, his friends and
his contemporaries, as well as technical and scientific changes
which were taking place at the turn of the eighteenth century.
Contributions include an article by former US Navy Secretary John
Lehman on Stephen Decatur and another by Professor John Hattendorf
on Admiral Sir John Gambier, and the observations of American
scientist, Professor Benjamin Silliman, who visited Britain in
1805. Other characters who appear are the New York-born Westphal
brothers, Jack Punch' Perkins who was the first black officer in
the Royal Navy, William Pringle Green who was so critical of the
results at Trafalgar, and the two Loyalist Richard Bulkeleys,
father and son, who served with Nelson at the beginning and at the
end of his career. Two articles on technology in the Georgian navy
address the surprising developments of the carronade and ballooning
in the age of Nelson. Like earlier editions of The Trafalgar
Chronicle, this edition is sumptuously illustrated with some
seldom-seen pictures and will appeal to naval and social historians
whether they are academics, antiquarians or amateurs or the reader
who is curious to learn about significant but often overlooked
aspects of naval history.
From the Middle Ages through the glorious defeat of the Armada, the
triumphs of Nelson and the battles of the First and Second World
Wars, this entertaining history describes how the Royal Navy turned
this country into the world's foremost sea power. Based on
never-before-published material from the archives of the National
Maritime Museum, including letters, journals and despatches, we see
life in the navy as it was experienced by commanders and ordinary
seamen alike. More than just a story of battles, this book shows
how changes in technology were key to the development of the navy's
power, from broadside gunnery to copper-sheathed hulls, from
paddle-steamers and iron Dreadnoughts to the invention of
submarines and aircraft carriers. We see how the navy played a key
role in exploration, from Drake's circumnavigation of the globe and
Cook's voyages of discovery to Fraser's search for the North-west
Passage. Filled with colourful characters - the infamous Captain
Kidd, Captain Bligh, Samuel Pepys and Jackie Fisher, Blake, Beatty
and Jellicoe - this is an exciting account of heroes and villains,
innovators and adventurers, battles lost and won that vividly
illustrates one of the most fascinating stories in British military
history.
In November 1941 the Australian light cruiser HMAS Sydney, with a
crew of 645, disappeared off the coast of Western Australia. When
German sailors picked up from lifeboats claimed that their ship,
the Kormoran, a lightly merchant raider, had sunk the pride of the
Australian navy theories sprang up to explain the loss. Had a
second German warship been involved, or a Japanese submarine, even
though Japan was not yet in the war? Based on the German coded
accounts and interviews with German survivors, this book pieces
together what really happened in the desperate fight between the
two ships, whose wrecks were finally located 10,000 feet down on
the floor of the Indian Ocean in March 2008.
Already a decorated heroine of the First World War, British-born
Mary Lindell, Comtesse de Milleville, was one of the most colourful
and courageous agents of the Second World War, yet her story has
almost been forgotten. Evoking the spirit of Edith Cavell, and
taking the German occupation of Paris in 1940 as a personal
affront, she led an escape line for patriotic Frenchmen and British
soldiers. After imprisonment, escape to England, a secret return to
France and another arrest, she began to witness the horrors of
German-run prisons and concentration camps. In April 1945, a score
of British and American women emerged from the Women's Hell -
Ravensbruck concentration camp - who had been kept alive by the
willpower and the strength of one woman, Mary Lindell. She combined
a passion for adventure with blunt speech and persistently
displayed the greatest personal bravery in the face of great
adversity. To counter German claims that they had no British or
American prisoners, Mary smuggled out a plea for rescue and
produced her list from her pinafore pocket, compiled in secret from
the camp records. This vital list contained the names of captured
women, many of whom were agents of British Military Intelligence,
the Special Operations Executive or the French Resistance.
Poignantly supported by first-hand testimony, Lindell's List tells
the moving story of Mary Lindell's heroic leadership and the
endurance of a group of women who defied the Nazis in the Second
World War.
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