Taken from a wide variety of sources, this is a unique and detailed compilation of German, Italian, Japanese, Romanian, Finnish and Vichy-French submarine successes and claims against Allied and Neutral ships in every theatre of the war at sea. Each entry gives the date of the attack; the nationality, name and commander of the attacking submarine; a map reference giving the precise location of the attack; and the type, tonnage, nationality and name of the ship sunk. Additional information, aimed at resolving controversial claims and clarifying hitherto inexact data, is also provided.

Here is a comprehensive accounting of all United States and allied submarine attacks on the Japanese for which success was claimed or occurred. The expanded coverage focuses on successes by U.S. and British and Dutch submarines in the Pacific and Indian oceans, Soviet submarines, and losses caused by mines laid by submarines. The book also includes details from top-secret "Ultra" messages decoded during the war and recently translated documents that provide correct Japanese ship names, ship type and tonnage, convoy names, human loss numbers and other attack details, as well as a military evaluation of each attack.

During World War II, Germany, Japan, and Italy built approximately 2,000 small, inherently stealthy, naval craft to perform special operations and conventional naval missions. Much more numerous and more technically advanced than their Allied counterparts, they saw service worldwide, operating in the Pacific, Mediterranean, Black Sea, Indian Ocean, North Sea, and the English channel. Manned by courageous crews, these vessels made daring attacks on Allied ships in heavily protected anchorages using torpedoes and mines. Most notable were attacks against Gibraltar – launched from an Italian cargo vessel interred in nearby neutral Spain that had been converted into a clandestine support base and equipped with an underwater hatch – and Pearl Harbor. They were used against shipping in coastal waters and, near the end of the war, in desperate attempts to offset their opponents' overwhelming naval superiority during the US advance across the Pacific and the Allied amphibious landings in France and Italy. This volume will detail the history, weapons, and operations of German, Japanese, and Italian midget submarines.

The factors leading to the defeat of the Axis Powers in World War II have been debated for decades. One prevalent view is that overwhelming Allied superiority in materials and manpower doomed the Axis. Another holds that key strategic and tactical blunders lost the war--from Hitler halting his panzers outside Dunkirk, allowing more than 300,000 trapped Allied soldiers to escape, to Admiral Yamamoto falling into the trap set by the U.S. Navy at Midway. Providing a fresh perspective on the war, this study challenges both views and offers an alternative explanation: the Germans, Japanese and Italians made poor design choices in ships, planes, tanks and information security--before and during the war--that forced them to fight with weapons and systems that were too soon outmatched by the Allies. The unprecedented arms race of World War II posed a fundamental "design challenge" the Axis powers sometimes met but never mastered.

Six Victories examines one of the most interesting and instructive naval campaigns of World War II: the war on traffic in the Mediterranean during the fall and winter of 1941-42. It is a cautionary tale of how sea power was practiced, and how it shifted 180 degrees overnight. Based on British and Italian archival sources, the book emphasizes strategic context, the role of intelligence, and the campaign's logistics. In October 1941 the British Admiralty based a surface strike force in Malta to attack Axis sea lanes between Italy and Africa. Aided by Ultra intelligence, submarines, and bombers based in Malta, this force dominated the Central Mediterranean. From the end of October through the middle of December 1941, less than a third of the supplies shipped from Italian ports arrived in Libya. Shortages of ammunition and fuel finally compelled the Afrika Korps to retreat four hundred miles. Then, in the space of thirty hours, this all changed. First, Italian naval forces broke the blockade by fighting through a major convoy that arrived in time to blunt the British advance; next, the strike force plowed into a minefield laid by Italian cruisers; and finally, in a daring attack, Italian commandos crippled the Mediterranean Fleet's battleships in port. The swing in fortune was immediate and dramatic. Six Victories breaks new ground in the historiography of World War II. A compelling story, it relates lessons that are relevant today and should be required reading for all who practice the art of power at sea and for those who want to understand the intricate and interrelated factors that are the foundations of military success.

Submariners are a tight knit group of men bound together by training and experience, and with a language all their own. That language is perhaps a little vulgar, but never intentionally demeaning, and a little irreverent but still worldly. This work is an attempt to preserve and explain some of these curious guys who so proudly wear a shiny metal pin that looks like a strange pair of fish on their left breast. This process of accumulating this new language begins in Boot Camp, and is added to with every change of duty station the sailor undergoes. It is heard aboard the boats and, unknowingly, by family members who can't understand terms like head, deck, and overhead, and who think SOS is a distress signal.

The "Interim" LSM(R) or Landing Ship, Medium (Rocket) was a revolutionary development in rocket warfare in World War II and the U.S. Navy's first true rocket ship. An entirely new class of commissioned warship and the forerunners of today's missile-firing naval combatants, these ships began as improvised conversions of conventional amphibious landing craft in South Carolina's Charleston Navy Yard during late 1944. They were rushed to the Pacific Theatre to support the U.S. Army and Marines with heavy rocket bombardments that devastated Japanese forces on Okinawa in 1945. Their primary mission was to deliver maximum firepower to enemy targets ashore. Yet LSM(R)s also repulsed explosive Japanese speed boats, rescued crippled warships, recovered hundreds of survivors at sea and were deployed as antisubmarine hunter-killers. Casualties were staggering: enemy gunfire blasted one, while kamikaze attacks sank three, crippled a fourth and grazed two more. This book provides a comprehensive operational history of the Navy's 12 original "Interim" LSM(R)s.

In The Routledge Atlas of the Second World War, Martin Gilbert graphically charts the war’s political, military, economic and social history through 257 illuminating maps. The atlas covers all the major events from the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 to the defeat of Japan in August 1945. Focusing on the human – and inhuman – aspects of the war, The Routledge Atlas of the Second World War includes examination of: military, naval and air campaigns on all the war fronts the war on land, at sea and in the air the economic and social aspects of the war the global nature of the war, in armed combat and in suffering the impact of the war on civilians, both under occupation, and as deportees and refugees the aftermath of the war: post-war political and national boundaries; war graves; and the human cost of the war on every continent. This paperback edition includes several updates to existing maps, as well as ten new maps, specially drawn for this edition. The new maps include examinations of Japanese- American and African- American soldiers serving with the United States Army, British women special agents, Belgium at War, and the German occupation of the Channel Islands.

During the Second World War, the United Kingdom faced severe shortages of essential raw materials. To keep its armaments factories running, the British government enlisted millions of people in efforts to recycle a wide range of materials for use in munitions production. Recycling not only supplied British munitions factories with much-needed raw materials - it also played a key role in the efforts of the British government to maintain the morale of its citizens, to secure billions of dollars in Lend-Lease aid from the United States, and to uncover foreign intelligence. However, Britain's wartime recycling campaign came at a cost: it consumed items that would never have been destroyed under normal circumstances, including significant parts of the nation's cultural heritage. Based on extensive archival research, Peter Thorsheim examines the relationship between armaments production, civil liberties, cultural preservation, and diplomacy, making Waste into Weapons the first in-depth history of twentieth-century recycling in Britain.