In World War II the Canadian Navy embarked on a five-year anti-submarine offensive with a tiny fleet of six destroyers and a navy largely untrained in submarine warfare. This chronicle of ship successes and losses charts the increase in fighting capability of the Canadian naval forces and their growing success against enemy submarines and surface warships. From the dreadful loss of sixteen ships out of a single convoy in 1941, to the painstaking teamwork of hunting down and destroying an asdic contact a few years later, the authors have managed to capture the drama of these events in considerable detail. The information provided in each account represents comprehensive research into the incident from available records and from personal recollections and interviews collected by the authors. Each includes the ships and crews involved on both sides, their movements just prior to the event, the action itself, the casualty lists, and the medals awarded as a result of the action. This book also contains, for the first time, a complete record of all the Canadian owned Merchant ships lost, as well as a table of RCAF Squadron successes against enemy U-boats. --
Author of Lincoln and His Admirals (winner of the Lincoln Prize), The Battle of Midway (Best Book of the Year, Military History Quarterly), and Operation Neptune, (winner of the Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature), Craig L. Symonds has established himself as one of the finest naval historians at work today. World War II at Sea represents his crowning achievement: a complete narrative of the naval war and all of its belligerents, on all of the world's oceans and seas, between 1939 and 1945. Opening with the 1930 London Conference, Symonds shows how any limitations on naval warfare would become irrelevant before the decade was up, as Europe erupted into conflict once more and its navies were brought to bear against each other. World War II at Sea offers a global perspective, focusing on the major engagements and personalities and revealing both their scale and their interconnection: the U-boat attack on Scapa Flow and the Battle of the Atlantic; the "miracle" evacuation from Dunkirk and the pitched battles for control of Norway fjords; Mussolini's Regia Marina-at the start of the war the fourth-largest navy in the world-and the dominance of the Kidö Butai and Japanese naval power in the Pacific; Pearl Harbor then Midway; the struggles of the Russian Navy and the scuttling of the French Fleet in Toulon in 1942; the landings in North Africa and then Normandy. Here as well are the notable naval leaders-FDR and Churchill, both self-proclaimed "Navy men," Karl Dönitz, François Darlan, Ernest King, Isoroku Yamamoto, Erich Raeder, Inigo Campioni, Louis Mountbatten, William Halsey, as well as the hundreds of thousands of seamen and officers of all nationalities whose live were imperiled and lost during the greatest naval conflicts in history, from small-scale assaults and amphibious operations to the largest armadas ever assembled. Many have argued that World War II was dominated by naval operations; few have shown and how and why this was the case. Symonds combines precision with story-telling verve, expertly illuminating not only the mechanics of large-scale warfare on (and below) the sea but offering wisdom into the nature of the war itself.
From its eighteenth-century roots in exploration and trade, to the major conflicts of the First and Second World Wars, through to current roles in multinational operations with United Nations and NATO forces, Canada's navy - now celebrating its one hundredth anniversary - has been an expression of Canadian nationhood and a catalyst in the complex process of national unity. In the second edition of Canada's Navy, Marc Milner brings his classic work up to date and looks back at one hundred years of the Navy in Canada. With supplementary photos, updated sources, a new preface and epilogue, and an additional chapter on the Navy's global reach from 1991 to 2010, this edition carries Canadian Naval history into the twenty-first century. Milner brings effortless prose and exacting attention to detail to his comprehensive and accessible examination of this fascinating Canadian organization. This much-needed update of Canada's Navy will continue to provoke discussion about the past and future of the country's naval forces and their evolving role in the interwoven issues of maritime politics and economics, defence and strategy, and national and foreign policy.
Bounded by three great oceans, Canada stands as a maritime nation with rich seafaring traditions. Born of both national and British imperial interests in 1910 and maturing in two world wars, its navy is a vital national institution that continues to evolve in response to new and complex challenges. A Nation's Navy explores the decisive formative forces of the navy's history and illuminates the characteristically Canadian elements and values that have defined it.
In January 1944, Vice Admiral Percy Walker Nelles was fired from his position as head of the Royal Canadian Navy. Betrayed reveals the true story behind the dismissal: a divisive power struggle between two elite groups within the RCN pitted the navy's regular officers against a small group of self-appointed spokesmen for the voluntary naval reserve. Threats of public scandal, mass insurrection, and political intimidation caused one of the worst breakdowns ever in Canadian civil-military relations. This fascinating investigation into the machinations of a divided navy tackles important questions of military professionalism, leadership, and identity.
A guide to creating models of the World War II warship, featuring history on the ship as well as crafting tips. The “ShipCraft” series provides in-depth information about building and modifying model kits of famous warship types. Lavishly illustrated, each book takes the modeler through a brief history of the subject class, highlighting differences between sister-ships and changes in their appearance over their careers. This includes paint schemes and camouflage, featuring color profiles, highly detailed line drawings, and scale plans. The modelling section reviews the strengths and weaknesses of available kits, lists commercial accessory sets for super-detailing of the ships, and provides hints on modifying and improving the basic kit. This is followed by an extensive photographic gallery of selected high-quality models in a variety of scales, and the book concludes with a section on research references—books, monographs, large-scale plans and relevant websites. This volume includes all the features of the regular series, but the extent has been doubled to include far more detailed drawings of a class of ship that was built in huge numbers and in many variations. Mainstay of the Atlantic battle against the U-boats, Flower class corvettes were used by the British, Canadian, French, and U.S. Navies. “An excellent guide to an important ship in the Second World War, for modeler and maritime enthusiasts alike.” —The Nautical Magazine
The second World War dramatically affected Canada's shipbuilding industry. James Pritchard describes the rapidly changing circumstances and personalities that shaped government shipbuilding policy, the struggle for steel, the expansion of ancillary industries, and the cost of Canadian wartime ship production.