Faced with an increasingly formidable anti-ship cruise missile threat from the Soviet Union in the early days of the Cold War, and with the recent memory of the kamikaze threat from World War II, the USN placed a great priority on developing air defence cruise missiles and getting them to sea to protect the fleet. The first of these missiles were ......

How all great powers decline-including the US

USS Iowa (BB-61) was the lead ship in one of the most famous classes of battleships ever commissioned into the US Navy. Transferred to the Pacific Fleet in 1944, the Iowa first fired her guns in anger in the Marshall Islands campaign, and sunk her first enemy ship, the Katori. The Iowa went on to serve across a number of pivotal Pacific War ......

Illustrated history of the golden age of flying boats between the wars, revised with new historical information, colour photographs and artwork.

An illustrated celebration of the golden age of aircraft, cars and locomotives from 1900 to 1945.

Amphibious assault ships have been at the centre of nearly all of Britain's expeditionary campaigns since World War II, from the Suez crisis of 1956 to operations as far afield as Borneo (1963-66), the Falklands (1982), Sierra Leone (2000) and Iraq (2003). In major operations such as Suez and the Falklands, the use of amphibious assault ships was ......

The USS Swordfish was the first American submarine to sink a Japanese armed merchant ship. Drawing on archival sources and interviews with veteran sailors, this first full-length history of Swordfish provides detailed accounts of each patrol and covers the mysterious disappearance of the legendary submarine on its final mission.

The fascinating story of the 1907 RMS Mauretania, the then-most-famous liner in the world

First definitive account of the worst peacetime submarine disaster in Royal Naval history.