Arctic Warriors
Arctic Warriors

Author: Julie Grossmith Deltrice

Publisher: Pen and Sword

Published: 2013-10-17

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 1783030372

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In mid-1942 Alfred Grossmith Mason became Navigation/Gunnery Officer on SS Empire Baffin, a 6,978 ton cargo ship assigned to carry essential war supplies to the hard pressed Soviet Union. Fortunately he compiled this remarkable diary of the dramas and disasters that befell the ill-fated Convoy PQ18. This inspiring story follows the movement of his ship and the other merchantmen together with their Royal Naval escorts from the mustering point at Loch Ewe to their destination Archangel.??Daily German attacks from the air and sea and long periods at action stations deprived crews of sleep. The loss of many ships and comrades and the ever-present prospect of death through drowning and hypothermia took their toll. Having to function while exhausted, ill-nourished and freezing cold demanded that every man gave of his utmost over a prolonged period. Yet remarkably, as this book shows, humour remained intact.??Once in Archangel his insight into the hardships faced by the Russian population is revealing. For the surviving sailors there remained the awesome challenge of the return journey without any escort. Unlike so many, the Author finally reached Britain in December 1942.??Arctic Warriors is a rare and graphic personal account that captures the atmosphere of this infamously costly convoy and others like it. If any doubts remain of the terrible conditions and dangers that merchant seamen aced in the hostile waters of the North Atlantic and Barents Sea, this superb record, published in the Year of the Convoy, will surely put them to rest.

Arctic Warrior
Arctic Warrior

Author: Jim Hindle

Publisher: Bookmundo

Published: 2023-11-17

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 9403707046

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The years from 1960 until 1980 were probably the height of the 'Cold War' between the USSR and the Western nations, divided by Churchill's famous 'Iron Curtain'. The threat to world peace felt real and the West, in the form of NATO, needed a high-profile quick reaction force to address this threat to any NATO country with a common border with the USSR. The result was the formation, in 1960 of a new Force, the Allied Command Europe (ACE) Multinational Force, Land or AMF(L). In 1967, the Royal Corps of Signals added its first permanent unit to this force and this commitment continued until the disbandment of AMF(L) in 2002. Becoming an Arctic Warrior required each man to undertake specialist survival and winter warfare training in order to be able to fight effectively in extreme and inhospitable conditions. This book is a collection of individual soldiers experiences of serving with this force along the common borders with the USSR, predominantly in Arctic Norway, Turkey and Greece.

The Red Warrior: U.S. Perceptions of Stalin’s Strategic Role in the Allied Journey to Victory in The Second World War
The Red Warrior: U.S. Perceptions of Stalin’s Strategic Role in the Allied Journey to Victory in The Second World War

Author: Reagan Fancher

Publisher: Vernon Press

Published: 2024-09-24

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13:

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Through U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Lend-Lease program, American leaders sought to keep Joseph Stalin’s Red Army in the field and fighting Adolf Hitler’s forces in the Second World War from 1941 forward. Delivered by the Anglo-American Arctic naval convoys, overland through the Iranian deserts and mountains, and through the skies from Alaska to Siberia, this much-needed material aid helped Stalin’s Red Army to continue fighting and thereby prevented a separate peace with Hitler’s Germany and a mechanized repeat of the First World War’s Brest-Litovsk fiasco. Yet Roosevelt and other U.S. officials, due to their severe underestimation of Stalin’s character and his rigid and fanatical devotion to exporting Communism at gunpoint, gambled incorrectly that they could win the Soviet premier’s heart and mind through several excessive wartime aid gestures, including the furnishing of atomic bomb materials to the Soviet regime. By 1945, American leaders had succeeded in their strategic goal of keeping Stalin and his Red Army in the war and hastening victory but failed in their efforts to purchase the Soviet premier’s goodwill and commitment to postwar peace, heralding the global Cold War, and setting the stage for later U.S. martial aid programs to those resisting aggression abroad. In addition to its primary focus on the American leadership’s perceptions of Stalin’s strategic importance to the Allied war effort in the Second World War, this work also includes a detailed assessment of Roosevelt’s Soviet Lend-Lease program alongside U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s later support for the Afghan Islamic guerrillas resisting Soviet occupation during the Soviet-Afghan War of the 1980s and a comparison of both martial aid programs with Washington’s recent revival of Lend-Lease aid for the Ukrainian war effort. It offers today’s American leaders and policymakers a chance to consult the lessons of history and apply them in the present.

Arctic Convoy PQ18
Arctic Convoy PQ18

Author: John R McKay

Publisher: Pen and Sword Maritime

Published: 2024-01-30

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 1399036629

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This superbly researched book tells the story of one of the most significant maritime operations of the Second World War. The importance of the Arctic convoys providing the Soviets with the necessary equipment needed to win the war on the Eastern Front has too often been underestimated. This book puts that right. Following PQ17, the worst Allied maritime disaster of the Second World War, it was imperative that PQ18 got through. So when the convoy left Loch Ewe on 2 September 1942 the stakes could not have been higher. The Battle of Stalingrad was hanging in the balance. Had the convoy suffered unacceptable shipping and war supply losses, the Arctic route would have had to be suspended with potentially war-changing consequences not just for the Soviets but the whole Allied war effort. Consequently, as this work vividly describes, it was both the most heavily defended and the most heavily attacked convoy of the whole war. The Author draws on contemporaneous accounts of the combatants from both sides including U-boat crews, airmen and, of course, the crews of the warships and merchantmen. Offering newly discovered facts about the convoy’s turbulent passage, this book is a valuable addition to the history of the campaign which will appeal to historians and laymen alike.

The High North
The High North

Author: Ryszard M. Czarny

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2015-08-06

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 3319216627

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This book deals with the transformation of the Arctic from an isolated or a distant region to a member of the global community, vulnerable to global changes, and an area frequently in the very center of the world’s attention. Increased global interest is a potential source of tensions between the need for exploration or exploitation, and the requirements of protection. This context calls for new data, knowledge and information vital for a better understanding of interactions between different systems, as well as developing awareness about the current and potential changes in the future. The objective of the book is to help develop a strategy of adaptation to climate change based on the knowledge and experience of the extremely effective mechanisms which for centuries made survival possible in this region.

Eagle Blue
Eagle Blue

Author: Michael D'Orso

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2008-12-13

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 1596917725

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Eagle Blue follows the Fort Yukon Eagles, winners of six regional championships in a row, through the course of an entire 28-game season, from their first day of practice in late November to the Alaska State Championship Tournament in March. With insight, frankness, and compassion, Michael D'Orso climbs into the lives of these fourteen boys, their families, and their coach, shadowing them through an Arctic winter of fifty-below-zero temperatures and near-round-the-clock darkness as the Eagles criss-cross Alaska in pursuit of their-and their village's-dream.

Be Visionary
Be Visionary

Author: Marty Strong

Publisher: John Hunt Publishing

Published: 2022-12-09

Total Pages: 213

ISBN-13: 1785354337

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Be Visionary: Strategic Leadership in the Age of Optimization is a self-help, business leadership book that demonstrates to existing and aspiring leaders the positive impact of applying flexibility, creativity and decisiveness to achieve results - even in uncertain times. More importantly, this book helps leaders to understand that while business operations optimization may have value in certain circumstances, it can also adversely affect a leader's management style, his or her message and replace strategic thought with short-term focus and gratification. For example, even the most efficient wagon-wheel manufacturer in the early 1900s was put out of business by the invention of the automobile - think and lead strategically!