War in a Stringbag

War in a Stringbag PDF Author: Charles Lamb
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
ISBN: 9780304358410
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 325

Book Description
A classic autobiography by the best known Second World War Fleet Air Arm pilot. A story of real life adventure, action and heroism. Commander Charles Lamb fought an exceptional war flying the slow and obsolete Fairey Swordfish for the Fleet Air Arm. It was an antiquated machine, but it could outmanoeuvre almost any other aircraft, and in Charles Lamb's hands, the 'Stringbag' - as the torpedo bomber was affectionately known - was a deadly weapon. Charles Lamb fought in the thick of the action. This is his story, from the first day of war as a Lieutenant on board Courageous, to the accident aboard Implacable in action against the Japanese in June 1945 which ended his war. A rare account of determination, action and spirit by a man who was an inspiration to those around him.

To War in a Stringbag

To War in a Stringbag PDF Author: Charles Lamb
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : World War, 1939-1945
Languages : en
Pages : 364

Book Description

The Stringbags

The Stringbags PDF Author: Garth Ennis
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
ISBN: 1682475239
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 194

Book Description
If you do the incredible often enough, they'll want you to do the impossible. Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Fascist Italy began World War II with aircraft that could devastate enemy warships and merchantmen at will. Britain's Royal Navy squadrons went to war equipped with the Fairey Swordfish. A biplane torpedo bomber in an age of monoplanes, the Swordfish was underpowered and undergunned; an obsolete museum piece, an embarrassment. Its crews fully expected to be shot from the skies. Instead, they flew the ancient "Stringbag" into legend. Writer Garth Ennis (Preacher, The Boys, War Stories) and artist PJ Holden (Battlefields, World of Tanks: Citadel) present the story of the men who crewed the Swordfish: from their triumphs against the Italian Fleet at Taranto and the mighty German battleship Bismarck in the Atlantic, to the deadly challenge of the Channel Dash in the bleak winter waters of their homeland. They lived as they flew, without a second to lose--and the greatest tributes to their courage would come from the enemy who strove to kill them. Based on the true story of the Royal Navy's Swordfish crews, The Stringbags is an epic tale of young men facing death in an aircraft almost out of time.

Stringbag

Stringbag PDF Author: David Wragg
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1844151301
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Book Description
This is a narrative account of the operations of the Fairey Swordfish throughout World War Two. The most famous of these was the attack on the Italian fleet at Taranto, crippling three battleships and damaging several other ships as well as the seaplane base and an oil storage depot. The Swordfish played a prominent part in the Battle of Matapan and in the sinking of the Bismarck. Less happily, Swordfish were used in the unsuccessful and ill-prepared raid on the Germans at Petsamo and in the abortive attack on the battle cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau during the Channel Dash in 1942.

The Kamikaze Hunters

The Kamikaze Hunters PDF Author: Will Iredale
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1681771799
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 360

Book Description
In May 1945, with victory in Europe established, the war was all but over. But on the other side of the world, the Allies were still engaged in a bitter struggle to control the Pacific. And it was then that the Japanese unleashed a terrible new form of warfare: the suicide pilots, or Kamikaze.Drawing on meticulous research and unique personal access to the remaining survivors, Will Iredale follows a group of young men from the moment they signed up through their initial training to the terrifying reality of fighting against pilots who, in the cruel last summer of the war, chose death rather than risk their country's dishonorable defeat—and deliberately flew their planes into Allied aircraft carriers.

Past to Present

Past to Present PDF Author: William Stevenson
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0762787376
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 277

Book Description
William Stevenson may be best known for his friendship with and books about another William Stephenson, otherwise known as Intrepid, whose spy network and secret diplomacy changed the course of history. Originally published in 1976, A Man Called Intrepid sold over 2 million copies and quickly became a New York Timesbestseller. However, readers will be just as fascinated by his life’s story and adventures. Stevenson chronicles the major events of his life, beginning with his daring and dangerous time as a naval pilot during WWII flying a multitude of legendary aircraft—Stringbag, Tiger Moth, Seafire, Hellcats—and learning various maneuvers in the skies enroute to Russia, over England, Canada, Scotland, and the Pacific. After the war, still yearning for adventure, he returns to Canada to write for The Toronto Daily Star, where he again meets William Stephenson (aka Intrepid) on assignment and develops a lifelong friendship. Stevenson travels the globe, visiting Hong Kong, Delhi, Kashmir, Kenya, Kuala Lumpur, Moscow, Thailand, and many other exotic locals, where he meets iconic figures, such as Ian Fleming, Prime Minister Nehru, Ho Chi Minh, Chiang Kai-shek, Mao Tse-tung, Zhou Enlai, Tito, Khrushchev, and the King of Thailand among others. Privy to confidential information, full of international intrigue, Stevenson is a living embodiment of modern history. Past to Present, with story after amazing story to tell, will leave the reader breathless.

Attack on Taranto

Attack on Taranto PDF Author: Thomas P. Lowry
Publisher: Stackpole Books
ISBN: 0811766780
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 174

Book Description
On November 11, 1940, 21 slow, canvas-covered British warplanes, launched from the carrier Illustrious, attacked the harbor at the Italian port of Taranto and put most of the Italian navy out of commission. This all-but-forgotten operation, the authors argue, deserves historical recognition as an inspirational precedent for the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor 13 months later. Taranto demonstrated that battleships in a shallow, heavily defended harbor could be sunk by a handful of torpedo-bombers. That lesson Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, commander-in-chief of the Japanese fleet, learned well-while the American military virtually ignored it. “By this single stroke the balance of naval power in the Mediterranean was decisively altered.” –Winston S. Churchill

World War II at Sea

World War II at Sea PDF Author: Craig L. Symonds
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190243694
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 720

Book Description
Author of Lincoln and His Admirals (winner of the Lincoln Prize), The Battle of Midway (Best Book of the Year, Military History Quarterly), and Operation Neptune, (winner of the Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature), Craig L. Symonds has established himself as one of the finest naval historians at work today. World War II at Sea represents his crowning achievement: a complete narrative of the naval war and all of its belligerents, on all of the world's oceans and seas, between 1939 and 1945. Opening with the 1930 London Conference, Symonds shows how any limitations on naval warfare would become irrelevant before the decade was up, as Europe erupted into conflict once more and its navies were brought to bear against each other. World War II at Sea offers a global perspective, focusing on the major engagements and personalities and revealing both their scale and their interconnection: the U-boat attack on Scapa Flow and the Battle of the Atlantic; the "miracle" evacuation from Dunkirk and the pitched battles for control of Norway fjords; Mussolini's Regia Marina-at the start of the war the fourth-largest navy in the world-and the dominance of the Kidö Butai and Japanese naval power in the Pacific; Pearl Harbor then Midway; the struggles of the Russian Navy and the scuttling of the French Fleet in Toulon in 1942; the landings in North Africa and then Normandy. Here as well are the notable naval leaders-FDR and Churchill, both self-proclaimed "Navy men," Karl Dönitz, François Darlan, Ernest King, Isoroku Yamamoto, Erich Raeder, Inigo Campioni, Louis Mountbatten, William Halsey, as well as the hundreds of thousands of seamen and officers of all nationalities whose live were imperiled and lost during the greatest naval conflicts in history, from small-scale assaults and amphibious operations to the largest armadas ever assembled. Many have argued that World War II was dominated by naval operations; few have shown and how and why this was the case. Symonds combines precision with story-telling verve, expertly illuminating not only the mechanics of large-scale warfare on (and below) the sea but offering wisdom into the nature of the war itself.

I Sank The Bismarck

I Sank The Bismarck PDF Author: John Moffat
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1409082199
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 410

Book Description
In the early hours of the 27th of May, 1941, the German warship Bismarck - scourge of the Atlantic ocean - was sailing towards a fateful encounter. Two days previously, Prime Minister Winston Churchill had issued the order to "Sink the Bismarck". High winds and low visibility added to the atrocious morning weather as Fleet Air Arm pilot, John Moffat, took to the air in his open cockpit bomber. Along with twelve other brave pilots, John Moffat took down the largest warship of its time. A warship that had destroyed the famed HMS Hood within minutes, and was able to withstand anything the British military threw at them. These men, in their Swordfish, managed to avoid the fearful anti-aircraft fire and launched their torpedoes. One of them hit, holing the German warship. This is his story - of how as a young man he experienced first-hand the titanic struggle for naval supremacy, the cramped-cabins and meagre rations of WW2, the mind-numbing patrols over hundreds of miles of ocean and the adrenalin and fear of being in a fragile aircraft sought out by gunfire. As the only surviving member of his fellow pilots, John Moffat tells of everything that led him to be able to say, "I sank the Bismarck".
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