Library Results | Royal Museums Greenwich

Last big gun : at war & at sea with HMS Belfast /Brian Lavery. "As she lay in dry dock, devastatingly damaged by one of Hitler's newly deployed magnetic mines after barely two months in service, few could have predicted the illustrious career that lay ahead for the cruiser HMS Belfast. After three years of repairs to her broken keel, engine- and boiler-rooms, and extensive refitting, she would go on to play a critical role in the protection of the Arctic Convoys, would fire one of the opening shots at D-Day and continue supporting the Operation Overlord landings for five weeks. Her service continued beyond the Second World War both in Korea and in the Far East before she commenced her life as one of the world's most celebrated preserved visitor ships in the Pool of London. Her crowning glory however came in December 1943 when, equipped with the latest radar technology, she was to play the leading role in the Battle of the North Cape sinking the feared German battlecruiser Scharnhorst, the bãete noir of the Royal Navy. In doing so the ship's crew made a vital contribution to, what was to be, the final big-gun head-to-head action to be fought at sea. In The Last Big Gun Brian Lavery, the foremost historian of the Royal Navy, employs his trademark wide-ranging narrative style and uses the microcosm of the ship to tell the wider story of the naval war at sea and vividly portray the realities for all of life aboard a Second World War battleship. The book is lavishly illustrated with photographs and illustrations and will appeal to all those with an interest in military history and life in the wartime Royal Navy."--Provided by the publisher. 2015. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 623.82BELFAST

SBS silent warriors : the authorised wartime history of the Special Boat Service from the secret SBS archives /Saul David. "Britain's SBS - or Special Boat Service - was the world's first maritime special operations unit. Founded in the dark days of 1940, it started as a small and inexperienced outfit that leaned heavily on volunteers' raw courage and boyish enthusiasm. It went on to change the course o f the Second World War - and has served as a model for special forces ever since. The fledgling unit's first mission was a daring beach reconnaissance of Rhodes in the spring of 1941. Over the next four years, the SBS and its affiliates would carry out many more spectacular operations in the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, the Channel and the Far East. These missions - including Operation Frankton, the daredevil attempt by the 'Cockleshell Heroes' to paddle up the Garonne river and sink Axis ships in Bordeaux harbour - were some of the most audacious and legendary of the war. Paddling flimsy canoes, and armed only with knives, pistols and a few sub-marine guns, this handful of brave and determined men operated deep behind enemy lines in the full knowledge that if caught they might be executed. Many were. Yet their many improbable achievements - destroying enemy ships and infrastructure, landing secret agents, tying up enemy forces, spreading fear and uncertainty, and, most importantly, preparing the ground of D-Day - helped to make an Allied victory possible. Written with the full cooperation of the modern SBS - the first time this ultra-secretive unit has given its seal of approval to any book - an exclusive access to its archives. SBS: Silent Warriors allows Britian's original special forces to emerge from the shadows and take their proper and deserved palce in our island story."--Provided by the publisher. 2021. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 940.54/5941

Explorers and their quest for North America / Philip J. Potter. "On 11 October 1492 the sun set on a clear Atlantic Ocean horizon and the night was cloudless with a late rising moon. As the lookouts high in the riggings of Christopher Columbus' three ships strained their eyes into the golden light of the moon, near two o'clock in the morning the watchman on the Pinta shouted out, 'Land, land' igniting the era of exploration to the New World. The Age of Discovery became an epic adventure sweeping across the continent of North America, as the trailblazers dared to challenge the unknown wilderness to advance mankind's knowledge of the world. Explorers Discovering North America traces the history of the discovery, exploration and settlement of the western hemisphere through the comprehensive biographies of fourteen explorers, who had the courage and inquisitiveness to search the limits of the world. The book features many famous adventurers including Hernan Cortes whose victorious battles against the Aztecs conquered Mexico for Spain, Henry Hudson's sea voyages in search of the Northwest Passage led to the colonization of New York and exploration of the Hudson Bay in Canada, while Meriwether Lewis' journey across the Louisiana Purchase began the mass migration of settlers to western America. Among the lesser known explorers discussed in the work are Vitus Bering whose discovery of Alaska established Russia's claim to the region and Alexander Mackenzie's 107-day trek across western Canada that opened the frontier to settlement, commerce and development of its natural resources. From Columbus to Lewis the exploration of the New World became one of humankind's greatest quests that altered history forever."--Provided by the publisher 2017. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 910.4(7)

Sound of the waves : a WW2 memoir, how scientists worked to defeat the U-boat threat during the Battle of the Atlantic /E.A. Alexander. "When German U-boats threatened to starve Britain into submission by cutting off food supplies in WW2, sonar scientists and engineers worked against the clock to improve anti-submarine detection in order to defeat them, to guide the X-Craft that attacked the German battleship, KMS Tirpitz, and the craft used in the D-Day landings. There has long been - and continues to be - great interest in WW2 submarine warfare which will often focus on the craft, the men who commanded them and the equipment developed for them but the lives and endeavours of those who developed, perfected and adapted the sonar on which they depended has not been widely appreciated. Many of the personal and specific details mentioned within Sound of the Waves have never been divulged until now. Seen through the eyes of Eric, a bright young physical chemist, this memoir describes in intimate detail what life was like for the talented men and women working for the British Admiralty at Her Majesty's Anti-Submarine Experimental Establishment in Scotland and the Top Secret projects they were involved in. The scientific and technical advances achieved at the Establishment during the war years are explained in uncomplicated terms but Sound of the Waves also reveals that these scientists and engineers were not simply part of Churchill's 'army of boffins ' working in a vacuum but were ordinary people with families and interests outside of their fields of study. This very personal account of the life and research of a young scientist and his colleagues is therefore as much a social history of the war years as a history of underwater weapons in WW2. Flashbacks to Eric's childhood give a clue as to how a curious and creative mind can be nurtured and how a dyslexic child can excel in the sciences. Eric Alexander was born in South Africa in 1916. He came to England prior to the start of the Second World War. It was on gaining his doctorate at Oxford University in 1941 that he was invited to join the Admiralty as an Experimental Officer to improve anti-submarine detection devices. After the war he made his career with the Admiralty as a senior sonar scientist in Dorset, England. In 1966 he was seconded to the diplomatic service of the Foreign Office and appointed Scientific Councellor to the British Embassy in Moscow."--Provided by the publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available.

History of the Adriatic : a sea and its civilization /Egidio Ivetic ; translated by Geraldine Ludbrook. "The Adriatic is 'the small Mediterranean' - a sea within a sea, part of the Mediterranean and at the same time detached from it, a largely enclosed sea with stunning coastlines and a long history of commercial, political and cultural exchange. Silent witness to the flow of civilizations, the Adriatic is the meeting point of East and West where many empires had their frontiers and some overlapped. With Italy on one side and the Balkans on the other, the Adriatic is the area where the Latin West became intertwined with the Greek and Ottoman East. This book tells the history of the Adriatic from the first cultures of the Neolithic Age through to the present day. All of the great civilizations and cultures that bordered and crossed the Adriatic are discussed: Ancient Greece and Rome, Byzantium and the Holy Roman Empire, Venice and the Ottomans, Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity and Islam. Byzantium was replaced by Venice, queen of the Adriatic, which reached its zenith at the beginning of the sixteenth century and maintained commercial and military hegemony in its Gulf, sharing the sea with the Turks, the Habsburgs, the Pope and the Spanish vice-kingdom of Naples. It was Napoleon who ended Venice's reign in 1797. In the nineteenth century, the Austrian Empire prevailed, and Central Europe reached the Mediterranean through the Adriatic. United Italy placed its most symbolic frontier in the eastern Adriatic, clashing with Austria-Hungary in the First World War. The twentieth century was marked by the prolonged conflicts and eventually peace between Yugoslavia, Albania and Italy. Today the Adriatic is a region increasingly integrated into the European Union, experiencing a new era of cooperation following the dramatic collapse of Yugoslavia. Across centuries, this book illustrates the rich cultural and artistic heritage of diverse civilizations as they left their mark on the cities, shores and states of the Adriatic"--Provided by the publisher. 2022. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 909/.096385

Fittest of the fit : health and morale in the Royal Navy, 1939-1945 /Kevin Brown "'Fittest of the fit' was the Royal Navy's boast about its personnel, a claim based on a recruitment process that was effectively self-selection. This book examines that basic assumption and many of the issues that followed from it. Beginning with the medical aspects of recruitment, it looks at how health and fitness was maintained in the adverse environment of sea service, including the particularly onerous extremes of Arctic and Tropical conditions, and life for its submariners and airmen as well as those in the surface fleet. The massive mid-war expansion of personnel was a particular challenge to accepted wisdom and how the Navy coped is a major aspect of the story. Beyond the purely physical, the importance of psychological factors and the maintenance of morale is another theme of the book, taking in everything from entertainment to tolerance of onboard pets. Inevitably, the effects of battle, injury and stress dominated naval medicine, and action experience led to rapid changes in everything from basic preparations to protective clothing. In a conscious search for improvement, the Navy became an early adopter of many medical innovations, driven by a permanent committee created to study personnel issues. To put this all into context, comparisons are made with the other British services as well as US Navy practice. From this emerges a rounded picture of a crucially important factor in the wartime success of the Senior Service."--Provided by the publisher. 2019. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 613.68

Lighter-than-air : the life and times of Wing Commander N.F. Usborne, RN, pioneer of naval aviation /Guy Warner. "Neville Florian Usborne entered the Royal Navy as a cadet in 1897. In the years between him joining up and the outbreak of the First World War, he engaged in a huge number of enterprises and endeavours. Praise and respect garnered in accordance with his achievements all helped to establish his reputation in later years as an 'irreplaceable' pioneer and a leading light of early British airship design. His fertile imagination and enterprising spirit fused to form a dynamic personality, able in wartime to draw up countless schemes in an effort to outwit the enemy. His chief task during the Great War was to dream up new tactics and designs to combat the Zeppelin menace, perceived as one of the most damaging threats of the entire conflict. He was also deeply involved in the design of the very successful SS and Coastal Class airships; indeed, during 1915 he was actually appointed Inspector Commander of Airships at the Admiralty. Unfortunately, his illustrious career was destined to be cut short in 1916 when he was killed testing a prototype of one of his own designs. This new biography seeks to shine a light on an overlooked pioneer of early aviation and it does so in entertaining and reverential style. The importance of Usborne the pioneer is made plain; as one of his contemporaries commented upon his death, 'No one can talk of the early days of British airship design without mention of his name and work. A personality was lost that February day which was irreplaceable.'"--Provided by the publisher. 2016. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 92USBORNE

Ships of the Royal Navy : the complete record of all fighting ships of the Royal Navy /J.J. Colledge. Colledge is still the first stop for anyone wanting more information on any British warship from the fifteenth century to the present day when only the name is known. Each entry gives concise details of dimensions, armament and service dates, and its alphabetical and chronological arrangement makes it easy to track down the right ship. 2010. • BOOK • 4 copies available. 623.82(42)

Japanese carriers and victory in the Pacific : the Yamamoto Option /Martin Stansfeld. "'Japanese Carriers and Victory in the Pacific' focuses on the pre-war debate between building a new generation of super-battleships or adopting aircraft carriers as the capital ships' of the future. An Asian power in particular sees carriers as a way of challenging the USA and the colonial empires initially losing the contest yet coming out all right in the Cold War aftermath. Martin Stansfeld examines the much overlooked genesis of Japan's so-called shadow fleet that was a secret attempt to bring about parity with the US in carriers -- albeit only with slower speed conversions of liners and auxiliaries but along with the super-battleships cluttered launch facilities when these could have been devoted to keel-up fast fleet carrier production. This first analytical look at what major launch facilities were available in Japan shows that the Imperial Japanese Navy could have doubled its fast carrier fleet thereby able to give sufficient air cover for an invasion of Hawaii rather than just the raid on Pearl Harbor, but only providing nobody noticed they were building all these carriers. This is shown to have been entirely possible given the IJN's extraordinary success at covering up their super-battleship and shadow fleet production. This secret fast carrier fleet programme is given the name 'phantom fleet' by Stansfeld who proceeds to demonstrate how the strategy of the Pacific War would have been transformed. Weaving through the chapters is an exotic cast of characters led most notably by Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the conceiver of Pearl Harbor and a figure of mythic status to Japanese today and famous around the world thanks to the movies. Stansfeld dwells on the ironies of war, notably how, without the day that will live in infamy', America might never have become the worldwide super-power it is today."--Provided by the publisher. 2021. • BOOK • 2 copies available. 359.94835095209044

Crossing the bar : an oral history of the British shipbuilding, ship repairing and marine engine-building industries in the age of decline, 1956-1990 /edited by Anthony Slaven and Hugh Murphy. 2013. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 629.12(42)"1956/1990"

The Ocean Class of the Second World War / Malcolm Cooper. "This new book tells the story of the Ocean class of standard cargo ships, their design, building and careers, and the author places them firmly in the context of the battle of the Atlantic which was raging at the time of the first launchings. They entered the vanguard of the Allied shipping effort at a time when the German U-boat threat was at its most dangerous, and British shipping resources were stretched to the limit. They were deployed in the North Atlantic, on the long supply routes around Africa to the Middle East, in the Russian convoys, in operations in support of the invasions of North Africa and Italy and the land campaigns which followed, in the D-Day landings and later amphibious operations on the south coast of France. Finally, some of the class joined an invasion force making its way towards Malaya when Japan surrendered in August 1945. The Oceans paid a heavy price for these accomplishments, one third of the class being lost to torpedoes, bombs or mines in places as far apart as the Florida coast, the Norwegian Sea, the Bay of Algiers and the Gulf of Oman. While these achievements alone would merit an important place in histories of the war at sea, the impact of the Oceans stretched far beyond the direct contribution of the ships themselves. The yards where they were built also served as models for a series of new American shipyards, designed to mass produce cargo vessels with such speed and in such volume as to completely reverse the mathematics of attrition, which had run so badly against the Allies into 1942. Even more important, the Oceans' blueprints were used as the basis for the American Liberty ship, the 2,700-strong fleet which finally tilted the balance of the war at sea decisively in the Allies' favour and went on to underpin the post-war renewal of the world merchant fleet. This comprehensive new history, based on extensive archival research and lavishly illustrated with contemporary photographs, restores the Oceans to their rightful place in history. The ships' design antecedents are explained, and their ordering, financing and construction analysed in full. Wartime operations are covered in depth, by theatre and with full details of war losses and other casualties. The book concludes with an assessment of their subsequent peacetime careers and a comparison to other war-built designs. This is a model history of a highly significant class of ship."--Provided by the publisher. 2022. • BOOK • 2 copies available. 940.545941

Striking the hornets' nest : naval aviation and the origins of strategic bombing in World War I /Geoffrey L. Rossano, Thomas Wildenberg. "This book is much more than just a history of the Navy's struggle during World War I to develop methods to destroy the German U-boat bases in Belgium. Underlying the story is the struggle among competing interests, both within and among the Allies and within the American Expeditionary Forces, for scarce resources. The authors have written a book that will become the definite study of the Northern Bombing Group. This unit's history needs to be read, for the men of the group laid the foundation for how U. S. Striking the Hornets' Nest provides the first extensive analysis of the Northern Bombing Group (NBG), the Navy's most innovative aviation initiative of World War I and one of the world?s first dedicated strategic bombing programs. Very little has been written about the Navy's aviation activities in World War I and even less on the NBG. Standard studies of strategic bombing tend to focus on developments in the Royal Air Force or the U.S. Army Air Service. This work concentrates on the origins of strategic bombing in World War I, and the influence this phenomenon had on the Navy's future use of the airplane. The NBG program faced enormous logistical and personnel challenges. Demands for aircraft, facilities, and personnel were daunting, and shipping shortages added to the seemingly endless delays in implementing the program. Despite the impediments, the Navy (and Marine Corps) triumphed over organizational hurdles and established a series of bases and depots in northern France and southern England in the late summer and early fall of 1918. Ironically, by the time the Navy was ready to commence bombing missions, the German retreat had caused abandonment of the submarine bases the NBG had been created to attack. The men involved in this program were pioneers, overcoming major obstacles only to find they were no longer needed. Though the Navy rapidly abandoned its use of strategic bombing after World War I, their brief experimentation directed the future use of aircraft in other branches of the armed forces. It is no coincidence that Robert Lovett, the young Navy reserve officer who developed much of the NBG program in 1918, spent the entire period of World War II as Assistant Secretary of War for Air where he played a crucial role organizing and equipping the strategic bombing campaign unleashed against Germany and Japan. Rossano and Wildenberg have provided a definitive study of the NBG, a subject that has been overlooked for too long."--Provided by the publisher. 2015 • BOOK • 1 copy available. 359.38(42:73)"1914/1918"

Explore our collection