Clash of Fleets is an operational history that records every naval engagement fought between major surface warships during World War I. Much more than a catalog of combat facts, Clash of Fleets explores why battles occurred; how the different navies fought; and how combat advanced doctrine and affected the development and application of technology. The result is a holistic overview of the war at sea as it affected all nations and all theaters of war. A work of this scope is unprecedented. Organized into seven chapters, the authors first introduce the technology, weapons, ships, and the doctrine that governed naval warfare in 1914. The next five chapters explore each year of the war and are subdivided into sections corresponding to major geographic areas. This arrangement allows the massive sweep of action to be presented in a structured and easy to follow format that includes engagements fought by the Austro-Hungarian, British, French, German, Ottoman, and Russian Navies in the Adriatic, Aegean, Baltic, Black, Mediterranean, and North Seas as well as the Atlantic, India, and Pacific Oceans. The role of surface combat in the Great War is analyzed and these actions are compared to major naval wars before and after. In addition to providing detailed descriptions of actions in their historical perspectives, O'Hara and Heinz advance several themes, including the notion that World War I was a war of navies as much as a war of armies. They explain that surface combat had a major impact on all aspects of the naval war and on the course of the war in general. Finally, Clash of Fleets illustrates that systems developed in peace do not always work as expected in war, that some are not used as anticipated, and that others became unexpectedly important. There is much for today's naval professional to consider in the naval conflict that occurred a century ago.

Black Phoenix is the first in-depth English-language work to cover the operations, organization, and order of battle of the Marina Repubblicana -- the naval force of Benito Mussolini's fascist state that fought alongside Germany from September 1943 to May 1945. Not even in Italian has such a rich and detailed study of this subject ever been published. Black Phoenix tells of the navy created by Prince Junio Valerio Borghese from the kernel of the X MAS Flotilla special attack force. Borghese's navy used small and expendable units to wage asymmetrical warfare and in the process tied down a vastly superior foe. Black Phoenix is a book rich in lessons for today's troubled world and complicated naval environment where littoral warfare is a new center of focus and concern. Consisting of ten chapters and three appendices, the Black Phoenix opens with the history of the troubled German-Italian naval relations between 1940 and 1943 and the immediate effects of the 8 September 1943 armistice. It examines the hasty establishment of the Marina Repubblicana on a volunteer basis of hand-picked personnel and the force's operations off Anzio, the Provence, in the Ligurian Sea, and the Adriatic. A closing section assesses the Marina Repubblicana's impact in the greater conflict and its role in Germany's remarkable ability to prolong the Mediterranean campaign to the war's final days. Black Phoenix is based on primary sources in Italian, English, German, and French. It is profusely illustrated with fifty photographs, some never-published from the private collections of participants and colored period propaganda, along with artwork and maps created especially for this book.

The land of Ossa is in the midst of change. The old prophets have been murdered and the holy cities razed. Kings are now gods and a gigantic empire of nomads founded by the greatest ruler of the age, the mighty Bar Lev, is sweeping through the plains, across the broad rivers, and over the mountain barriers of Ossa. Against Bar Lev stands one man: the famous captain of mercenaries from the west, Talo the Talein. Their struggle is interrupted, however, by the unfolding of an old prophecy and by the emergence of a new power in the land. The girl-child Getlof, daughter of an ancient race. As warriors and kings hasten to harness this prophecy to their own schemes, they find that the girl, and the spirits of Ossa who stand behind her, have a power they are unable to comprehend and fill a need they never knew existed. Ossa is a story of the spirit and self-realization as much as a tale of adventure and temporal conflict Strong characters meet in surprising situations that are fantastic yet strangely familiar. It is a book that will delight and inspire, and cause the reader to consider the nature of life and the things that matter most. Vincent P. O'Hara is a well known military historian and the author of many books and articles. Ossa is his first published work of fiction.

The Royal Navy's Revenge and other Episodes of the War at Sea: a collection of self-contained and fast-paced accounts of naval battles, previously published in national magazines and especially selected because they are fascinating, yet little known.

The naval war of 1939-1945 was a long and bitter struggle fought in every ocean, on, below and above the sea. It resonates with famous names like Midway, Bismarck, Guadalcanal, and the Battle of the Atlantic. This collection of articles previously published in national magazines including World War II, Tin Can Sailor, and Pacific War explores some less famous episodes in the naval war including naval actions fought in the Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean, the South China Sea, and the English Channel, between the naval forces of France, Thailand, Italy, Poland, Germany, Japan, and of course, the U.S. and Royal navies.

The Royal Navy's Revenge includes the title action, the last surface battle of the war between British destroyers and a former nemesis of the Royal Navy, the Japanese heavy cruiser Haguro. The story of the U.S. Navy's first surface action against the Japanese, a victory won off the coast of Borneo by four World War I era destroyers is included. The book also contains self-contained and fast-paced accounts of naval actions fought between Italy and Germany, France and Great Britain, and the Battle of Koh-Chang, between France and Thailand. It also has an account of a mystery battle between German and American destroyers that has escaped the notice of historians until recently, the story of the defiant German flotilla that held out in the English Channel until the very end of the war and the little known naval campaign fought off the coast of Syria between Vichy France and naval forces from Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand.

These fascinating and well researched episodes by the respected naval historian Vincent P. O'Hara will entertain and educate even the most well-studied World War II enthusiast.

On Seas Contested is an in-depth analysis of the Second World War's seven major navies. A team of expert naval historians have contributed chapters outlining the navies of the United States, the United Kingdom and Commonwealth, Japan, Germany, Italy, France, and the Soviet Union. Each chapter consistently details key features such as weaponry, training, logistics, and doctrine. This definitive work will be a standard reference for years to come.

By mid-1942 the Allies were losing the Mediterranean war: Malta was isolated and its civilian population faced starvation. In June 1942 the British Royal Navy made a stupendous effort to break the Axis stranglehold. The British dispatched armed convoys from Gibraltar and Egypt toward Malta. In a complex battle lasting more than a week, Italian and German forces defeated Operation Vigorous, the larger eastern effort, and ravaged the western convoy, Operation Harpoon, in a series of air, submarine, and surface attacks culminating in the Battle of Pantelleria. Just two of seventeen merchant ships that set out for Malta reached their destination. In Passage Perilous presents a detailed description of the operations and assesses the actual impact Malta had on the fight to deny supplies to Rommel s army in North Africa. The book s discussion of the battle s operational aspects highlights the complex relationships between air and naval power and the influence of geography on littoral operations."

The Mediterranean Sea was the most intensely contested body of water in World War II. As the maritime crossroads where Europe, Asia, and Africa meet, more major naval actions were fought in the Mediterranean than in the Atlantic or Pacific. Despite its importance, remarkably little has been written about the subject, and what exists is largely one-sided and outdated. This fresh study of the naval war in the Mediterranean analyses the actions and performances of the five major navies-British, Italian, French, German, and American-during the entire five-year campaign and objectively examines the national imperatives that drove each nation's maritime strategy. Struggle for the Middle Sea sidesteps the myths that haunt this campaign, such as Great Britain enjoying a moral advantage over Italy, or the French being Germany's puppet, or the North African campaign significantly contributing to the eventual Allied victory. The book documents how the British Royal Navy, despite brilliant victories, was bled white in a campaign with questionable strategic goals; how Italy followed its own coherent naval strategy, much to the frustration of its German ally; and how the Marine Nationale was the strength of the independent French state and how it fought the Allies-and rejected the Axis-to maintain that independence. Most World War II histories tell the story of the Mediterranean War from a limited national point of view. Other works also end the story in 1943. Struggle for the Middle Sea provides a complete history of the entire campaign from all perspectives and covers Germany's largely unknown-and remarkably successful-struggle to employ sea power in the Mediterranean after the Italian armistice. The book's perspective and depth of detail is unmatched by other works, and its fresh viewpoints, supported by extensive research in Italian and French sources, are certain to provoke controversy. Its lessons about coastal warfare, the use of the sea, and the difficulty of sea denial have particular application today.

The U.S. Navy against the Axis tells the story of the U.S. Navy's surface fleet in World War II with an emphasis on ship-to-ship combat. It advances the thesis that the fleet's role in America's ultimate victory was more crucial than commonly realized and that it holds many lessons for today's Navy and the nation as a whole.The book refutes the widely-held notion that the attack on Pearl Harbor suddenly rendered surface combatants obsolete and that aviation and submarines dominated the Pacific War; it demonstrates that the battleships, cruisers and destroyers made major contributions to America's victory and played decisive roles at critical junctures. The U.S. Navy against the Axis offers a cautionary parable relevant to today's Navy. It demonstrates how swift adaptability and intellectual honesty were fundamental to the Navy's success against Japan. The book's underlying premises is that we cannot assume that in a conflict against conventional or asymmetric enemies, the nation holds title to the same virtues demonstrated by the Navy three generations past. Instead those lessons need to be constantly studied and validated in the face of postwar mythologies, lest they be forgotten.