Naval & Military Press – förlag

The author of this concise guide to unarmed combat and self-defence is a legend. W. E. Fairbairn (1885-1960) spent over thirty years in the tough environment of the Riot Squads of China’s Shanghai Municipal Police. In order to lower levels of Police mortality at the hands of Chinese Tongs, he studied ancient Chinese and Japanese martial arts, including Ju-jitsu, and was the first foreigner to be awarded a black belt in the discipline. He developed his own system which he called ‘Defendu’. At the outbreak of the Second World War, he was recruited by Britain’s Special Operations Executive as an Instructor in unarmed combat and expounded the deadly mysteries of attack and defence to scores of  trainee agents about to be dropped into occupied Europe. His methods were approved and officially adopted throughout the British army. Fairbairn also developed weapons and defence aids such as bullet proof vests. He is best known as the co-inventor of the famous Sykes-Fairbairn knife. In this book he  expounds his distilled experience of unarmed combat. Fully illustrated, it shows how to deliver deadly blows with hand, fist, knee and boot; wrist, bear- and strangle holds (and how to break them);  how to throw an enemy, and how to break their backs; how to disarm a pistol-wielding attacker; and securing a prisoner. The book also contains a chapter on the use of the rifle in close combat by Captain P. N. Walbridge.

Another in the series of booklets written by Col. G. A.Wade and published in the dangerous year of 1940 intended for the instruction of the newly recruited Home Guard. Colonel Wade’s clear writing and the diagrams tell the new recruits quite literally how to Guard their Homes.

The first in the 18-volume Official History of the Second World War covers the defence of the British Isles on land, sea and in the air, from the Phoney War, through the Battle of Britain and the Blitz, to victory in Europe. 

This is the extended Directing Staff version of the BAOR Battlefield Tour covering Operation Varsity - the air element of the Rhine assault crossing by 21 AG. The work describes the operations of XVIII United States Corps (Airborne) in support of the second British Army crossing of the River Rhine on 24 March 1945. It is especially concerned with the part played by the 6 British Airborne Division in those operations on 24 and 25 March.

It was Montgomery's plan to secure a bridgehead prior to developing operations to isolate the Ruhr and to thrust into the Northern plains 

of Germany. Complete with 15 large-scale maps, 7 diagrams, appendices and 15 photographs.

The biggest and bloodiest battle of the English Civil War, Marston Moor was a major Parliamentary victory which saw an Anglo-Scottish army under Cromwell and Fairfax overwhelm a Royalist force under Prince Rupert and the Marquess of Newcastle. The battle outside York lost the north for King Charles and marked the beginning of the end of the Civil War. This lecture, originally delivered at the battle site, gives a succinct portrait of one of the major engagements of English history.

An early and historical Great War battlefield guide to the whole Western Front, complete with 64 good colour maps, a descriptive text and War Graves Index of over 1700 cemeteries. The main value to this book is that it shows the locations of many of the British cemeteries that were later consolidated by the CWG.

A full and useful assembly of all 96 General, Situation & Sketch maps from the UNITED KINGDOM MILITARY SERIES: OFFICIAL CAMPAIGN HISTORY - VICTORY IN THE WEST: THE BATTLE OF NORMANDY & THE DEFEAT OF GERMANY.

The maps are in chronological order, full size and faithful to the original cartography in all respects, allowing the reader to follow the liberation of German-occupied western Europe in 1944-45, from D-Day itself with its airborne assaults, the naval bombardment and seaborne landings on Gold, Juno, Sword, Utah and Omaha beaches. The hard fighting as the Allies secured their bridgehead and pushed inland, capturing Cherbourg and Caen, and enveloped the main German defending armies at the battle of the Falaise Gap. The failure of the British attempt to outflank the Germans with the airborne landings at Arnhem. The slow Allied advance into the Low Countries. Hitler's attempted audacious counterattack through the snowbound Ardennes which, after initial success, was thrown back in the 'Battle of the Bulge'. The final fighting and the crossing of the Rhine in March 1945.

This is an important and official map collection with both General Maps, Situation Maps, Diagrams and Sketch Maps, and should be part of every serious military scholar's library.