It is now almost exactly a hundred years since a heavier-than-air craft first took off and landed on a warship, and from the very beginning flying at sea made unique demands on men and machines. As warplanes grew larger,...

The submarine was undoubtedly the most potent purely naval weapon of the twentieth century. In two world wars, enemy underwater campaigns were very nearly successful in thwarting Allied hopes of victory - indeed, annihilation of Japanese shipping by US...

The landing craft assault or LCA was one of the unsung heroes of the Second World War. It took part in practically every amphibious operation from Norway to Normandy and landed around 400,000 men in action conditions, plus many...

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...

On the eve of Germany's surrender in May 1945, Grossadmiral Karl Dönitz commanded thousands of loyal and active men of the U-boat service. Still fully armed and unbroken in morale, enclaves of these men occupied bases stretching from Norway...

For most of the twentieth century Britain possessed both the world’s largest merchant fleet and its most extensive overseas territories. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Royal Navy always showed a particular interest in the cruiser – a...

In the late nineteenth century the advent of the modern torpedo woke the Royal Navy to a potent threat to its domination, not seriously challenged since Trafalgar. For the first time a relatively cheap weapon had the potential to...

Since the Second World War the old categories of destroyer and frigate have tended to merge, a process that this book traces back to the radically different 'Tribal' class destroyers of 1936. It deals with the development of all...

Between 1939 and 1945 the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm grew from a small force into a powerful strategic weapon. British carrier-based aircraft fought throughout the world and David Brown here describes their activities in the Home, Mediterranean, Eastern...

Fast, manoeuvrable and heavily armed, destroyers were the most aggressive surface warships of the twentieth century. Although originally conceived as a defensive screen to protect the main battlefleet from torpedo attack, the gamekeeper soon turned poacher, and became primarily...