Osprey

The history of the US Navy's gunboats, their roles in building a worldwide American naval presence and in combat, from the Yangtze era through to World War II.For more than half a century, American gunboats were the ships often responsible for policing small crises and provided deterrence and (...)

A concisely detailed guide to the Allied tanks that fought from D-Day to the breakout from Normandy, their qualities, numbers, and performance, and how they were used on the battlefield.When Allied tanks began to roll off the landing craft on D-Day, it marked the start of one of the great periods (...)

On April 2, 1982, Argentine armed forces invaded and captured the Falkland Islands, a British dependency in the South Atlantic long claimed by Argentina. In this comprehensive account, renowned naval historian Dr Edward Hampshire takes advantage of new sources to examine the Naval campaign that saw (...)

By early 1972, Nixon's policy of "Vietnamization" was well underway: South Vietnamese forces had begun to assume greater military responsibility for defense against the North, and US troops were well into their drawdown, with some 25,000 personnel still present in the South. When North Vietnam (...)

From the German occupation of Belgium in May 1940, Flemish recruits from northern Belgium - considered by the Nazis to be 'Germanic' - were accepted individually into Waffen-SS units. From Hitler's invasion of the USSR in June 1941, additional recruits from the French-speaking south (Wallonia) were (...)

The SAS, the world's most famous special operations unit, made its name in the desert of North Africa, shooting up Axis airfields from specially modified Willys jeeps. Following the start of the El Alamein offensive in October 1942, the SAS used jeeps effectively in reconnoitring and ambushing the (...)

This detailed new study explores the battle of Leuctra and the tactics that ultimately led to the complete defeat of Sparta, and freed Greece from domination by Sparta in a single afternoon.The battle of Leuctra, fought in early July in 371 BC was one of the most important battles ever to be fought (...)