Immediately before and after the outbreak of the First World War, Britain seriously considered sending its fleet into Heligoland Bight and seizing an island base off the German coast – Borkum perhaps. The goal was to force the German fleet out to fight, or bottle it up with mines, submarines and destroyer flotillas, instituting a
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
After WWII the Soviet Union found itself confronted with a new and largely unanticipated problem: the aircraft carriers of the US Navy. They were the chief defense of the sea lanes to our forces disputing the superior Red Army’s potential control of western Europe, as well as a force for “power projection,” capable of strategic
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
In all of WWII, there are few greater contrasts than between the perfect organization and astounding creative engineering of the D-Day landings and of Germany’s “Operation Sea Lion”, its planned invasion of England – impromptu, cobbled-together, and in the end mostly bluff. “Mulberry” artificial harbors, cross-channel underwater fuel pipelines, concrete “Phoenix” floating caissons, swimming tanks,
Graf Zeppelin: The Only German Aircraft Carrier By Jürgen Prommersberger, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, (2017) Reviewed by Robert P. Largess “Graf Zeppelin” is a name to conjure with. Most people know it as the name of the pioneering passenger dirigible which made 143 Atlantic crossings, most on commercial service. Less know of her successor,
