An Illustrated History of the Navies of World War II
by Antony Preston
About the Book
Used Book. Hardcover. Dust jacket included. Good Condition. Tearing to the dust jacket.
-- from the dust jacket
The role of Navies in the Second World War was decisive. The invasion of Europe in 1944 could only have been made possible by the maintenance of a continuing flow of food and war material across the Atlantic. Germany almost won the Battle of the Atlantic with the U-Boat campaign by March 1943. If the flow of goods to Britain had been cut off, the opening of a second front in Europe would have been impossible, But the convoys, destroyer escorts and cruisers of the Royal Navy and the US Navy won out, making the amphibious assaults on Normandy possible. To an even greater extent in the War in the Pacific, the American Navy, having stopped the Imperial Japanese Navy at the Coral Sea and Midway, slowly and inexorably, through naval and aerial actions and amphibious assaults, broke through the ring of islands forming the defence perimeter of Japan. Once the Philippine campaign had been launched, the attack on the Japanese home island was possible, an attack only halted after the atomic bomb forced Japan to surrender.
The story of the Navies of World War II, the ships which stopped the advance of the Axis and then destroyed it, and the men and the weapons which fought from those ships in the Atlantic, the Pacific and the Mediterranean are described brilliantly and dramatically by Antony Preston, one of the world’s most distinguished naval historians. In over 300 photographs and 26 maps, as well as 50 authoritative and colourful illustrations by the renowned technical artist, John Batchelor, the ships and navies of the Second World War are vividly portrayed in this book. Navies of World War II is essential to the library of any reader interested in ships and the war at sea and is likely to become a classic in the history of naval warfare.
