Armoured Warfare in the Far East, 1937–1945

Author: Anthony Tucker-Jones
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1473851688
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 189

Book Description
Anthony Tucker-Jones's photographic history is a fascinating visual introduction to the armoured battles of the Second World War in the Far East and Asia-Pacific regions, from 1937 to 1945. In contrast to the experience of the armies that fought in Europe and North Africa, in the Far East tanks remained an infantry support weapon, and their role is often neglected in histories of the conflict. Japanese armour confronted tanks deployed by the Chinese, Russians, British and Americans. Early in the war, against Chinese forces which lacked armour, the Japanese had some success, but their light and medium tanks were no match for their Allied counterparts. Later Japanese designs were better armed, but they were built in such small numbers that they could do little to stem the Allied advance. The role of armoured vehicles in each theatre of the war in the Far East is shown in a selection of over 150 rare wartime photographs that record armour in action in China, Manchuria, Mongolia, Malaya, Burma and during the battles fought for the Pacific islands.

Allied Armour, 1939–1945

Author: Anthony Tucker-Jones
Publisher: Pen and Sword Military
ISBN: 1526777983
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 274

Book Description
“An important review of armoured warfare, armoured vehicle design, tactics, and operational issues during World War 2 . . . it comes highly commended.” —Dr Stuart C. Blank, Military Archive Research During the first years of the Second World War, Allied forces endured a series of terrible defeats at the hands of the Germans, Italians and Japanese. Their tanks were outclassed, their armored tactics were flawed. But the advent of new tank designs and variants, especially those from the United States, turned the tables. Although German armor was arguably still superior at the end of the war, the competence of Allied designs and the sheer scale of their production gave them a decisive advantage on the armored battlefield. This is the fascinating story that Anthony Tucker-Jones tells in this book which is part of a three-volume history of armored warfare during the Second World War. Chapters cover each major phase of the conflict, from the early blitzkrieg years when Hitler’s Panzers overran Poland, France and great swathes of the Soviet Union to the Allied fight back in tank battles in North Africa, Italy and northern Europe. He also covers less-well-known aspects of the armored struggle in sections on Allied tanks in Burma, India and during the Pacific campaign. Technical and design armored are a key element in the story, but so are changes in tactics and the role of the tanks in the integrated all-arms forces that overwhelmed the Axis. “The matter of armoured vehicles and their role in the turning of the tide against Germany is covered brilliantly in Anthony Tucker-Jones’s excellent treatise.” —Books Monthly “Very Highly Recommended.” —Firetrench

China and Japan at War, 1937–1945

Author: Philip Jowett
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1473874416
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 253

Book Description
This pictorial history of the Sino-Japanese War offers a rare look at one of the most important yet neglected aspects of WWII. The 1937-1945 war between China and Japan was one of the most bitter conflicts of the twentieth century. It was a struggle between the two dominant peoples of Asia. Millions of soldiers fought on each side and millions of soldiers and civilians died. Philip Jowett's book is one of the first photographic histories of this devastating confrontation. Using a selection of almost 200 historic photographs, he traces the course of the entire war from the Japanese invasion and the retreat of the Chinese armies and their refusal to surrender, to the involvement of the Americans and the eventual Japanese defeat in 1945. Jowett’s graphic account is an absorbing introduction to this often-overlooked theatre of the Second World War. The images show the armies on all sides and the weaponry and equipment they used. But they also record the experience of the troops, Chinese and Japanese, and of the Chinese civilians who suffered terribly through eight years of war.

Fighting the People's War

Author: Jonathan Fennell
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107030951
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 967

Book Description
Jonathan Fennell captures for the first time the true wartime experience of the ordinary soldiers from across the empire who made up the British and Commonwealth armies. He analyses why the great battles were won and lost and how the men that fought went on to change the world.

Asian Armageddon, 1944–45

Author: Peter Harmsen
Publisher: Casemate
ISBN: 1612006280
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Book Description
A gripping account of the final period of the war in the Asia Pacific during WWII. The last installment of the War in the Far East trilogy, Asian Armageddon 1944-1945, continues and completes the narrative of the first two volumes, describing how a US-led coalition of nations battled Japan into submission through a series of cataclysmic encounters. Leyte Gulf, the biggest naval battle ever, was testimony to the paramount importance of controlling the ocean, as was the fact that the US Navy carried out the only successful submarine campaign in history, reducing Japan’s military and merchant navies to shadows of the former selves. Meanwhile, fighting continued in disparate geographic conditions on land, with the chaos of Imphal, the inferno of Manila, and the carnage of Iwo Jima forming some of the milestones on the bloody road to peace, sealed in Tokyo Bay in September 1945. The nuclear blasts at the end of the war made one observer feel as if he was ‘present at the creation.' Indeed, the participants in the events in the Asia Pacific in the mid-1940s were present at the creation of a new and dangerous world. It was a world where the stage was set for the Cold War and for international rivalries that last to this day, and a new constellation of powers emerged, with the outlines, just over the horizon, of a rising China. War in the Far East is a trilogy of books comprising a general history of World War II in the Asia Pacific. Unlike other histories on the conflict it goes into its deep origins, beginning long before Pearl Harbor, and encompasses a far wider group of actors to produce the most complete account yet written on the subject and the first truly international treatment of this epic conflict. Author Peter Harmsen weaves together complex events into a revealing and entertaining narrative, including facets of the war that may be unknown even to avid readers of World War II history, from the mass starvation that cost the lives of millions across China, Indochina, and India to the war in sub-arctic conditions in the Aleutians. Harmsen pieces together the full range of perspectives, reflecting what war was like both at the top and on the ground.

Britain's Secret War against Japan, 1937-1945

Author: Douglas Ford
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134244894
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 361

Book Description
A new look at how Britain’s defence establishment learned to engage Japan’s armed forces as the Pacific War progressed. Douglas Ford reveals that, prior to Japan’s invasion of Southeast Asia in December 1941, the British held a contemptuous view of Japanese military prowess. He shows that the situation was not helped by the high level of secrecy which surrounded Japan’s war planning, as well as the absence of prior engagements with the Imperial Japanese Navy and Army. The fall of ‘Fortress Singapore’ in February 1942 dispelled the notion that the Japanese were incapable of challenging the West. British military officials acknowledged how their forces in the Far East were inadequate, and made a concerted effort to improve their strength and efficiency. However, because Britain’s forces were tied down in their operations in Europe, North Africa and the Mediterranean, they had to fight the Japanese with limited resources. Drawing upon the lessons obtained through Allied experiences in the Pacific theatres as well as their own encounters in Southeast Asia, the British used the available intelligence on the strategy, tactics and morale of Japan’s armed forces to make the best use of what they had, and by the closing stages of the war in 1944 to 1945, they were able to devise a war plan which paved the way for the successful war effort. This book will be of great interest to all students of the Second World War, intelligence studies, British military history and strategic studies in general.

Japan’s Decision For War In 1941: Some Enduring Lessons

Author: Dr. Jeffrey Record
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN: 1786252961
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 105

Book Description
Japan’s decision to attack the United States in 1941 is widely regarded as irrational to the point of suicidal. How could Japan hope to survive a war with, much less defeat, an enemy possessing an invulnerable homeland and an industrial base 10 times that of Japan? The Pacific War was one that Japan was always going to lose, so how does one explain Tokyo’s decision? Did the Japanese recognize the odds against them? Did they have a concept of victory, or at least of avoiding defeat? Or did the Japanese prefer a lost war to an unacceptable peace? Dr. Jeffrey Record takes a fresh look at Japan’s decision for war, and concludes that it was dictated by Japanese pride and the threatened economic destruction of Japan by the United States. He believes that Japanese aggression in East Asia was the root cause of the Pacific War, but argues that the road to war in 1941 was built on American as well as Japanese miscalculations and that both sides suffered from cultural ignorance and racial arrogance. Record finds that the Americans underestimated the role of fear and honor in Japanese calculations and overestimated the effectiveness of economic sanctions as a deterrent to war, whereas the Japanese underestimated the cohesion and resolve of an aroused American society and overestimated their own martial prowess as a means of defeating U.S. material superiority. He believes that the failure of deterrence was mutual, and that the descent of the United States and Japan into war contains lessons of great and continuing relevance to American foreign policy and defense decision-makers.

The War Against Japan, 1941-1945

Author: John J. Sbrega
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317431782
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 921

Book Description
With over 5,200 entries, this volume remains one of the most extensive annotated bibliographies on the USA’s fight against Japan in the Second World War. Including books, articles, and de-classified documents up to the end of 1987, the book is organized into six categories: Part 1 presents reference works, including encyclopedias, pictorial accounts, military histories, East Asian histories, hisotoriographies. Part 2 covers diplomatic-political aspects of the war against Japan. Part 3 contains sources on the economic and legal aspects of the war against Japan. Part 4 presents sources on the military apsects of the war – embracing land, air and sea forces. Religious aspects of the war are covered in Part 5 and Part 6 deals with the social and cultural aspects, including substantial sections on the treatment of Japanese minorities in the USA, Hawaii, Canada and Peru.

Bolt Action: Empires in Flames

Author: Warlord Games
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472813529
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 126

Book Description
Far from the battlefields of Europe and North Africa, Allied forces fought a very different war against another foe, from the jungles of Burma to the islands of the Pacific and the shores of Australia. This new Theatre Book for Bolt Action allows players to command the spearhead of the lightning Japanese conquests in the East or to fight tooth and nail as Chindits, US Marines and other Allied troops to halt the advance and drive them back. Scenarios, special rules and new units give players everything they need to recreate the ferocious battles and campaigns of the Far East, from Guadalcanal to Okinawa, Singapore, the Philippines, Iwo Jima and beyond.

Armoured Warfare in the British Army 1939–1945

Author: Dick Taylor
Publisher: Pen and Sword Military
ISBN: 1399081063
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 370

Book Description
The second volume in Dick Taylor’s three-volume illustrated history of the evolution of armored maneuver warfare in the British army covers the period of the Second World War, in which the tank came of age and developed into the principal land weapon of decision. He describes how, during the first half of the war, the British army came close to disaster from the armored warfare perspective and how the bitter lessons of failure were learned in time to deliver success in 1944 and 1945. As well as providing a fascinating overview of the tactical use of armor during the main campaigns, he considers such much-neglected aspects as the role of training and organization, officer selection and recruitment, and the mechanization of other arms. His wide-ranging book also features extensive, well-laid-out tables giving key information about British armor during this period. This expert account quotes heavily from the vivid recollections of soldiers who served in armor, and is not afraid to criticize as well as praise.