Mark Lardas’s Russian Battleships and Cruisers of the Russo-Japanese War (New Vanguard #275) delves into the little discussed Russo-Japanese War. In particular, the Imperial Russian capital ships that fought in the losing effort against an unexpectedly tough opponent in the first defeat of a European power by an Asian foe, with strong repercussions for all
For many years after WWII, discussion of the Japanese wartime submarine force focused on its apparent failure – certainly its failure to achieve anything like the US and German submarine campaigns. Writing in the USNI Proceedings in 1961, Japanese submarine officer and historian Kennosuke Torisu notes that Japanese subs sank only a total of 171
For more than two hundred years, from Louis XIV to the twentieth century, France had the second-greatest navy in the world. It was built to challenge England’s control of the seas and enabled the building of the world’s second-largest overseas colonial empire – and American independence into the bargain. France’s navy always built ships of
