E V Martindale – författare

For centuries, battleships provided overwhelming firepower at sea. They were not only a major instrument of warfare, but a visible emblem of a nation’s power, wealth and pride. The rise of the aircraft carrier following the Japanese aerial strike on Pearl Harbor in 1941 highlighted the vulnerabilities of the battleship, bringing about its demise as a dominant class of warship. This book offers a detailed guide to the major types of battleships to fight in the two World Wars. Explore HMS Dreadnought, the first of a class of fast, big-gun battleships to be developed at the beginning of the 20th century; see the great capital ships that exchanged salvos at the battle of Jutland, including the German battlecruiser Derfflinger, which sank the British battleship Queen Mary; find out about the destruction of HMS Hood, which exploded after exchanging fire with the Bismarck, which itself was sunk after a trans-Atlantic chase by a combination of battery fire and aircraft-launched torpedoes; and be amazed at the ‘super-battleship’ Yamato, which despite its size and firepower, made minimal contribution to Japan’s war effort and was sunk by air attack during the defence of Okinawa. Illustrated with more than 120 vivid artworks and photographs, Technical Guide: Battleships of World War I and World War II is an essential reference guide for modellers and naval warfare enthusiasts.

First developed in the final years of World War I, aircraft carriers have been the dominant technology in naval warfare since World War II, following the devastatingly effective carrier-borne air raid on the Italian base of Taranto by the British in 1940, and the even more infamous air attack by hundreds of Japanese bombers on the US base at Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Today, the aircraft carrier is a key component of national navies around the world, offering a mobile aircraft platform that can be used to defend local waters as well as project power to every corner of the globe. Technical Guide: Aircraft Carriers features more than 50 of the most significant aircraft carriers from 1918 to the present, including the World War I-era converted battleship HMS Eagle, through the Japanese carriers Akagi and Kaga that were sunk at the famous Battle of Midway in 1942, to the great nuclear-powered supercarriers USS Enterprise and USS Nimitz of the Cold War era. The book comes up to date with the leading carriers of today, including the HMS Queen Elizabeth, Chinese Liaoning and Indian Vikrant. Illustrated with more than 80 vivid artworks and 40 photographs, Technical Guide: Aircraft Carriers is an essential reference guide for modellers and naval warfare enthusiasts.

From the very beginning of World War II, the German U-boats proved their worth, attacking Atlantic shipping and imposing a trangulating blockade on Allied supply lines that seriously degraded Britain’s ability to wage war. In the Pacific theatre, US Navy submarines terrorised Japanese shipping, sinking over 1,000 ships, including a battleship, eight carriers and 11 heavy cruisers.Arranged by country and by date, this book offers a detailed guide to the major types of submarine to serve in World War II. Find out about German U-boat U-47’s daring raid on the British naval base at Scapa Flow in October 1939, where it sank the battleship Royal Oak; marvel at the power of the German U-boat Wolf Packs, who sunk 32 Allied ships from Convoy SC-7 in just two days in 1940; learn about the Japanese I-19, which sunk the USS Wasp and USS O’Brien with a remarkable single salvo of six torpedoes in 1942; explore the German Type XXI diesel-electric Elektroboot, the first type designed to operate primarily submerged; wonder at the Japanese I-400 class carrier-submarine, which was equipped with floatplanes; and discover how U-boat U-405 was destroyed by a combination of small arms fire and ramming by American destroyer USS Borie in one of the most dramatic surface encounters of the war.Illustrated with more than 100 vivid artworks, Technical Guide: Submarines of World War II is an essential reference guide for modellers and naval warfare enthusiasts.