One of only two survivors of the famous Cockleshell Hero raid, Bill Sparks' war and postwar career has never before been told in full. In this gripping book, he describes not only his part in Operation FRANKTON, the daring Gironde raid, and his escape back to Britain, but how he fought with the Greek Sacred Squadron thereafter. Operating in small groups they raided and liberated islands in the Aegean Sea. After the war, bored with life as a bus driver, he joined the Malayan Police and saw action aplenty during the Emergency. Always something of a military maverick, Bill's memoir is truly action-packed. The book benefits from the inclusion of the official German investigation report into the Cockleshell Raid.

Cockleshell Commando: The Memoirs of Bill Sparks

Biographies & Memoirs

Sparks, Bill

Historical

Pen and Sword Maritime

Celebrating 100 years since the first submariner received the Congressional Medal of Honor, dive into pre-World War II submarine history through the first comprehensive, analytical, investigation into the life and times of Henry Breault. From 1900-41, Breault's life is reconstructed as lived through his Official Military Personnel File, census records, newspaper clippings, and connecting previous research. Breault's childhood, his enlistments in the Royal Navy Canadian Volunteer Reserve and the United States Navy are carefully reconstructed. From there, the conditions aboard the submarines he served on, his relationship with friends and family, his relationship to the women in his life, and his concept of masculinity and material identity allow us to better understand his life in the context he likely understood them. This book provides a new template for microhistorical observations into subjects whose primary sources are official military documentation to help better understand enlisted submariners.

The Silent Service’s First Hero: The First Submariner to Receive the Medal of Honor

Walker, Ryan C

Leaders & Notable People

“I recommend The Rescue Ships and the Convoys to any person desiring an account of the Battle of the Atlantic told from a little known and unique perspective.” -Nautical Research Journal\nThe Rescue Ships and the Convoys tells the history of one of the least known aspects of Second World War maritime history. Despite the threat of heavy losses of ships and lives, no hospital ships, which had to be lit, could accompany the convoys as they would betray a convoy’s position.\nThe solution was to create a fleet of 30 small Merchant Navy vessels of about 1,500 gross tons, mostly from coastal trade. These ‘Rescue Ships’, commanded and manned by Merchant Navy personnel, carried medical teams, and life-saving equipment including operating theatres, hospital beds, ‘Carley’ floats, and hoists.\nUndeterred either by either enemy action or atrocious weather conditions, these vessels accompanied close to 800 convoys and saved 4,194 lives from ships sunk in the North Atlantic and with the Arctic convoys. During their service, seven Rescue Ships were lost.\nThis is a story packed with suspense, danger, achievement and tragedy. As the author, Vice Admiral Schofield, who was closely involved in the establishment of the fleet, writes, it is a record ‘of great humanitarian endeavour, of superb acts of courage, of a display of seamanship of the highest order, of a devotion to duty by medical officers under the most arduous conditions imaginable, of great deeds by men of the Merchant Navy in little ships on voyages they were never designed to undertake.’

The Rescue Ships and the Convoys: Saving Lives During The Second World War

History

Schofield, Vice Admiral B.B.

Military

The Rescue Ships and the Convoys Saving Lives During The Second World War

B. B. Schofield

VICTORIA SCHOFIELD

Sunk by a U-boat, Attacked by Kamikazes: Memoirs of a War at Sea

Marsden, John

Sunk by a U-boat, Attacked by Kamikazes Memoirs of a War at Sea

JOHN MARSDEN

A remarkable read, detailed, hour-to-hour and 'immediate' account of action, a personal but modest story, and the author and shipmates of all ranks come to life. There are excellent accounts of training, action-stations, gunnery, tactics ad strategy, officer- and ratings- relationships, and leadership, and all told in objective and authentic, and readable language. This is no 'gung-ho' account but sober and serious history with full grasp of tactics and strategy. It shows how capital ships - battleships, battle-cruisers, heavy cruisers - are vulnerable to U-Boat and E-Boat attack while 'little ships', destroyers, light cruisers and frigates, are at sea constantly and protecting convoys. The account is from personal experience of service on the strategic position of England's East Coast and North Sea, with fear of German naval power, E-Boats and U-Boats, and the value early radar. There are graphic accounts of sea conditions, moving picture of a merchant captain and loss of ship, plus vital importance of mine-sweeping. Readers might be shocked by German battleships in the English Channel and quotes from German sources. There is a powerful account of the naval role at 'action-stations' of the Allies-Axis war-effort and encounters with top commanders, naval and military, and Mediterranean campaign of Admiral Cunningham - and invasion of Sicily and Italy, and Normandy D-Day preparation.

Destroyers, Greyhounds of the Fleet: Memoirs of a Naval Gunner in the Second World War

Saxton, Peter

When RMS Titanic was launched on 31 May 1911 at the Belfast shipyard of Harland and Wolff, she was the largest ship afloat and the most luxurious ocean liner in the world. Yet on the night of 14-15 April 1912, on her maiden voyage, she sank as a result of a collision with an iceberg. At the time, this was regarded as a tragic but unfortunate accident, with no blame attaching to her captain, Edward J. Smith. In fact, a statue was erected in the city of Lichfield, Staffordshire to his memory. The truth was, however, that Smith, even though he was warned on several occasions that there were icebergs in the vicinity - in fact in the very path of his ship - made no attempt to take evasive action. Instead, he sat down to dinner with his first class passengers, some of whom were the wealthiest people in the world. How can this be explained? Drawing on his medical knowledge and experience the author, for the first time, provides a possible answer to a question that had exercised the minds of Titanic scholars and the public at large ever since.

Titanic - Freak Accident or Farce?

Norman, Andrew

Europe

The projecting of military force to a distant shore has come to be seen as a uniquely British way of waging war. To be sure, many of these operations would now be classed as administrative landings with battle, if occurring at all, only following sometimes afterward. Others, of course, merit the label of opposed landings. To contemporaries of the period covered by this study, the evolutions went by the appellation of conjoint or combined operations. Less important than how they were styled remains the thought and the purpose giving rise to these ventures. In the decades before the First World War, professionals appreciated the myriad difficulties and dangers associated with amphibious operations. The laity, including statesmen, thought rather less of these matters but could recount numerous examples of their occurrence before 1914. Indeed, whatever operational failings Britain demonstrated during the World War a corpus of relevant experience was the least of these.What is now styled joint amphibious operations were difficult because they were never of a single type. Naval support to a military force standing on the defensive, raids, feints, blocking operations, riverine operations, and, yes, an opposed landing, spoke to a series of joint operations of ever-increasing complexity. Meanwhile, as every operation must at some point end, even the manner of evacuation came to be viewed as a special type of combined operation to be understood and learned. Finally, it remained that in a campaign of the grandest scale, examples of each might feature at differing moments along the way. Landings before 1914 were difficult and what military and naval authorities thought feasible before the onset of the World War in the realm of joint operations is a neglected field of study--a surprising omission given the ink that has been spilt retelling the debacles experienced at Gallipoli, Mesopotamia, and East Africa. Every campaign has its context--operational and strategic to be sure--but also political, doctrinal, and bureaucratic. How Britain elected to wage war in 1914 proved a product of these variables just as surely as the military and naval capabilities it could muster. Tying the strands of pre-war military experience and thought in the realm of joint operations is the chief purpose of this study which takes as its starting point 1882 and the British assault against Egypt. The choice is far from arbitrary as the moment saw several earning their spurs who would later play a central role in the amphibious operations executed during the Great War.To the extent learning is more than the product of self-experience, this work pays special attention to the Russo-Japanese War. Thinking officers appreciated that fundamental changes were occurring in the nature and style of war. A learned public also appreciated this courtesy of works such as Ivan Bloch's Is War Now Possible? Notwithstanding what British officers understood on the eve of the World War, the problem of time and scale remained. This alone should give one pause before chiding others over past mistakes. This study looks at what was thought, what was taught, what was expected, and what occurred in the thirty years before Britain found herself facing a scale of conflict not witnessed in a century.

The Development of British Amphibious Operations 1882-1914

Moretz, Joseph

Sea Fishing Disasters

Middleton, Christopher

World

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Pen and Sword Maritime publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Pen and Sword Maritime