This popular ship-design series is praised for its superb drawings and comprehensive text. Each book contains over 200 keyed line drawings as well as full descriptions of their design, construction, general arrangement, hull structure, operational history, and much moore. Numerous close-up and on-board photographs help to rekindle memories of these ships' exciting pasts.
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 Canadian escort group C 2 was comprised of the RCN destroyers Gatineau and Chaudiere, the frigate St. Catharines, the Corvettes Chilliwack and Fennel, and the RN destroyer Icarus. these six and the RN corvette Kenilworth castle combined to sing U-744 in the North Atlantic in a prolonged drama on March 5 and 6, 1944. At 32 hours, this the second-longest successful hunt of the war. Chilliwack able seaman Ralph Chartrand recalls the action: When the sub started to surface, everything that could shoot went into action and we fired all we could. While the crew of U-744 was jumping out of the conning tower, St. Catharines was closing in, but our captain outmanoeuvred Chilliwack in front to make sure that this was our sub. He gave the order "Prepare to ram," but soon the sub was empty, so we didn't ram. We lowered a lifeboat with a boarding party and they proceeded to U-744. While the lifeboat was tied to the sub, some members boarded the sub. then a big wave hit our lifeboat and flipped the crew into the water with the German Sailors. We took 17 prisoners on board. It was almost a major coup. Three lifeboats reached the Type VII C boat. German code books and the cypher machine were seized, but all three seaboats capsized in the rough sea and only one book was saved. All the Canadians were picked up. So, too, were 40 Germans. Icarus then dispatched the unsalable U-744 with a torpedo. Eleven Germans died, including the captain. Praise for Corvettes Canada. "It was the ubiquitous corvette, built in Canada, manned by volunteers and often as not based in a Canadian or Newfoundland port, that carried the burden of our Atlantic war...and few wartime sailors escaped at least some time aboard them. "For the most part, their experiences have gone unrecorded--especially those of the lower deck--and time will soon erase what the enemy and the sea itself could not. Fortunately, Mac Johnston has salvaged the experiences of 250 of these fast-departing corvette veterans, and has drawn their story together into a superb collective memoir of the Atlantic war. "Johnston has woven these memories...and the history of the wartime RCN into a tight fabric, one that is both entertaining and extremely valuable. If you have never read anything on the Canadian navy's part in the Battle of the Atlantic, start with this one; if you've read everything that's already available, you will find this one a gem." --Marc Milner, University of New Brunswick "I like your presentation. It's right from the horse's mouth so to speak. It is so authentic, I say it is a classic. It's as true a story as can be told. Corvette men who read your book, contributors or not, will marvel at your format and will live again the tortures of the Atlantic, the friendship of shipmates, the action stations alarm bell and the roar of depth changes... "Your book proves that these Corvette men were tough to stand the day-to-day tensions, rough seas, dangers and the boredom that was part of their sea life. You have done a wonderful story." -- Leo McVarish, HMCS Alberni, Winnipeg, Man.
Winston Churchill famously claimed that the submarine war in the Atlantic was the only campaign of the Second World War that really frightened him. If the lifeline to north America had been cut, Britain would never have survived; there could have been no build-up of US and Commonwealth forces, no D-Day landings, and no victory in western Europe. Furthermore, the battle raged from the first day of the war until the final German surrender, making it the longest and arguably hardest-fought campaign of the whole war. The ships, technology and tactics employed by the Allies form the subject of this book. Beginning with the lessons apparently learned from the First World War, the author outlines inter-war developments in technology and training, and describes the later preparations for the second global conflict. When the war came the balance of advantage was to see-saw between U-boats and escorts, with new weapons and sensors introduced at a rapid rate. For the defending navies, the prime requirement was numbers, and the most pressing problem was to improve capability without sacrificing simplicity and speed of construction. The author analyses the resulting designs of sloops, frigates, corvettes and destroyer escorts and attempts to determine their relative effectiveness.
The highly acclaimed 'Cruel Sea' is one of the all-time great naval and war thrillers. The film was a smash hit when released and it and the book continue to enjoy undiminished popularity. It covers the battle of the Atlantic and the people who fought it - their domestic triumphs, tragedies, worries and ambitions.
This book is about the PC Patrol Craft that fought in World War II. Almost 50,000 men served on 361 of them. Even so, PCs received little acclaim. One naval historian called them 'The Forgotten Fleet'. So that the world will not forget them, the author, a former PC sailor wrote this book. He tells the story of PCs in World War I and draws from his and his shipmates' experiences and memories. He uses old photos and drawings and from them describes what life was like for 65 men crowded aboard these small ships. He portrays the fearful times when tossed and torn by raging seas. He recounts the terrifying battles against submarines and kamikazes and when leading landing craft to the invasion beaches.
This book offers a unique perspective for understanding how and why the Second World War in Europe ended as it did—and why Germany, in attacking the Soviet Union, came far closer to winning the war than is often perceived. Why Germany Nearly Won: A New History of the Second World War in Europe challenges this conventional wisdom in highlighting how the re-establishment of the traditional German art of war—updated to accommodate new weapons systems—paved the way for Germany to forge a considerable military edge over its much larger potential rivals by playing to its qualitative strengths as a continental power. Ironically, these methodologies also created and exacerbated internal contradictions that undermined the same war machine and left it vulnerable to enemies with the capacity to adapt and build on potent military traditions of their own. The book begins by examining topics such as the methods by which the German economy and military prepared for war, the German military establishment's formidable strengths, and its weaknesses. The book then takes an entirely new perspective on explaining the Second World War in Europe. It demonstrates how Germany, through its invasion of the Soviet Union, came within a whisker of cementing a European-based empire that would have allowed the Third Reich to challenge the Anglo-American alliance for global hegemony—an outcome that by commonly cited measures of military potential Germany never should have had even a remote chance of accomplishing. The book's last section explores the final year of the war and addresses how Germany was able to hang on against the world's most powerful nations working in concert to engineer its defeat.
Passion, conflict and infidelity are vividly depicted in this gripping tale of two people and their marriage. When Kate married Jonathon she knew how different they were. She was a beautiful, successful career girl, he a struggling, idealistic writer. But what she didn't know was how much they both would change--and when Kate started questioning her former values, Jonathon was tasting the first corrupting fruits of success. Set in the glamorous jet-set background of South Africa, New York and Barbados, their story is one of conflicting emotions and broken ideals, of passions and infidelities which threaten to shatter a marriage already on shaky ground.
