Archive Results For: WW1
Book Review-‘British Naval Intelligence Through the Twentieth Century’ by A. Boyd
This book comes off the press with a fanfare of praise from leading historians. Its publication is quite simply a major event. It will single-handedly stimulate our greater interest and deeper understanding of naval events of the last century. It will inform the serious study of the academic, yet reward and delight a wider readership.. Read More
Filed under: WW1 | WW2 | Other (Twentieth C)
Subjects include: Administration | Battles & Tactics | Strategy & Diplomacy
Book Review-‘The War Lords and the Gallipoli Disaster: How globalized trade led Britain to its worst defeat of the First World War’ by N. A. Lambert,
The declared aim of this book is to advance a new and explicitly revisionist analysis of the genesis of the Gallipoli campaign, the un-successful 1915 Allied assault, exclusively naval at first but subsequently also amphibious, on the narrow straits connecting the Medi-terranean to the Black Sea. This is not an under-researched area, a fact that […] Read More
Filed under: WW1
Subjects include: Administration | Battles & Tactics | Strategy & Diplomacy
Book Review-‘How Carriers Fought’ by L. Celander
While the tentative naval aerial operations of the First World War and the next two decades’ experiments and exercises had embedded the concept of sea-borne aviation, and even though steps had been taken by three major naval powers to equip their navies and devise potential tactics, it was only during the furious, testing years of […] Read More
Filed under: WW1 | Interwar | WW2
Subjects include: Battles & Tactics | Naval Aviation
Book Review-‘Castaways in Question: A story of British naval interrogators from WW1 to denazification’ by D. Nudd
This is an entertaining book. The subject matter is the work of British interrogators, principally from the navy, in obtaining information from captured German sailors in the two World Wars. The story is largely told through interesting vignettes extracted from the intelligence reports produced on the back of these interrogations. At least for the Second […] Read More
Filed under: WW1 | Interwar | WW2
Subjects include: Battles & Tactics | Strategy & Diplomacy
Book Review-‘Churchill’s Admiral in Two World Wars: Admiral of the Fleet Lord Keyes of Zeebrugge and Dover GCB KCVO CMG DSO’ by J. Crossley
This is the first biography of Roger Keyes for some decades and fills a surprising gap in the literature. Keyes had a hugely successful career and was an archetypal son of the British Empire. Born in India in 1872, where his father was commander of the Punjab Frontier Force, he was one of nine children. […] Read More
Filed under: WW1 | Interwar | WW2
Subjects include: Biography
Book Review-‘The Russian Baltic Fleet in the Time of War and Revolution 1914–1918’ by S. N. Timirev (trs S. Ellis)
The First World War was a turbulent time for the Russian navy, rebuilding after the humiliation of the Russo-Japanese war of 1904–5, engaging with the German navy which was supporting the advance of troops into the imperial Russian territories of Lithuania and Latvia, and finally being debilitated by the effects of the 1917 revolution. A […] Read More
Filed under: Baltic | WW1
Subjects include: Biography | Navies
Book Review-‘The Kaiser’s U-Boat Assault on America: Germany’s great war gamble in the First World War, by H. J. Koerver
This book by Hans Joachim Koerver is a welcome new addition to histories of the first U-boat war. This is the author’s fifth book to examine aspects of this period. His first three were edited reprints of key Room 40/ NID (Naval Intelligence Division) documents housed at the National Archives, Kew. This included publication in […] Read More
Filed under: WW1
Subjects include: Strategy & Diplomacy | Submarines
Book Review-‘ Silver State Dreadnought: The remarkable story of battleship ‘Nevada’’ by S. M. Younger
USS Nevada was one of the first of a new generation of American dreadnoughts. She and her half-sister Oklahoma pioneered ‘all or nothing’ protection and oil burning as designed. She had turbines, but the US Navy was still worried about potential range disadvantages of these power plants and thus made Oklahoma a reciprocating engined vessel, […] Read More
Filed under: WW1 | WW2 | Post WW2
Subjects include: Battles & Tactics | Navies | Shipbuilding & Design
Book Review-‘British Dockyards in the First World War: Transactions of the Naval Dockyards Society Volume 12’ by P. MacDougall (ed.)
In his post-war study of the First World War, The World In Crisis (vol. 1, 1911–14) the former First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, observed drily that during the ‘naval scare’ of 1909, ‘The Admiralty had demanded six ships; the economists offered four; and we finally compromised on eight.’ This was a response to […] Read More
Filed under: WW1
Subjects include: Harbours & Dockyards
Book Review-‘How the Navy Won the War: The real instrument of victory, 1914–1918’ by J. Ring
Debates over what role British seapower might play in a European conflict long preceded the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. The idea that sea power might enable Britain to limit her military commitment to the Continent remained an alluring prospect throughout the conflict, and has proven no less attractive to many commentators […] Read More
Filed under: WW1
Subjects include: Navies