'Market Garden' was one of the most audacious, and ultimately controversial, operations of the Second World War - a joint penetration, by an armoured column and a large-scale airborne drop, to punch a decisive hole in the German defences. If it had succeeeded, the war could have ended in 1944. Yet the two-pronged attack failed in its objectives. This book details how, instead of being relieved after 48 hours as expected, British paratroopers were cut off for nine days. Facing two unexpected SS Panzer divisions the Allies were eventually evacuated across the Rhine after putting up an incredible fight: of the 10,000 men involved less than 2,000 survived. Campaigns 5, 24, 74 and 75 are also available in a single volume special edition as ‘Into the Reich’.

Among the important British Army reforms following the Boer War (1899-1902) was the introduction of a longer-range rifle for the cavalry instead of a carbine, and a tactical doctrine including dismounted fire. It remains the view of most historians that the cavalry learned dismounted tactics from their Boer opponents, and that postwar reform of the cavalry was imposed from outside. Senior cavalry officers of the period are viewed as reactionary, and their performance in the First World War judged accordingly. This view is based on a partisan interpretation of the Boer War and the cavalry's role in it, fostered by its contemporary institutional critics. In fact, a cavalry reform movement was introducing dismounted tactics before the Boer War, both sides in the war used mounted and dismounted tactics, and the cavalry's problems were largely those of supply and not of their own making. This has much wider implications for the assessment of British military doctrines up to the end of the First World War.

With essays from leading names in military history, this new book re-examines the crucial issues and debates of the D-Day campaign. It tackles a range of core topics, placing them in their current historiographical context, to present new and sometimes revisionist interpretations of key issues, such as the image of the Allied armies compared with the Germans, the role of air power, and the lessons learned by the military from their operations. As the Second World War is increasingly becoming a field of revisionism, this book sits squarely within growing debates, shedding new light on topics and bringing current thinking from our leading military and strategic historians to a wider audience. This book will be of great interest to students of the Second World War, and of military and strategic studies in general. (Routledge)

This key title in the acclaimed Battle Zone Normandy series explores the Allies' struggle to take Caen and its significance for the campaign. The city of Caen was perhaps the greatest major obstacle in the path of the Allied advance inland after their landings in Normandy, 6 June 1944. Consequently it was a key objective for 3rd British Division, landing on Sword Beach. The Allies were unable to capture the strategically important city on D-Day, however, in the teeth of armoured counter-attacks from 21st Panzer Division. Renewed attempts by 3rd Canadian Division on 7-8 June were foiled by 12th SS Panzer Division 'Hitlerjugend', as were 7th British Armoured Division's thrusts towards the city on 11-14 June. On 25 June Operation 'Epsom' was launched to take Caen. Preceded by RAF Bomber Command attacks, further British and Canadian assaults on 4 July stalled before the whole of the city could be taken. On 7 July Operation 'Charnwood' forced the Germans to withdraw from northern Caen. A much heavier bombardment opened Operation 'Goodwood' on 18 July, in the course of which the Canadians finally managed to liberate the rest of Caen, by now largely demolished after five weeks of intensive fighting.

This publication considers the lessons to be gained for Britain, the British armed forces, and for NATO as a whole, from the Yugoslav wars of dissolution (1991-1999), with particular emphasis on the Kosovo crisis. The papers come from a diverse and high quality mixture of analysts, practitioners and policy-makers. The issues developed here represent a significant advance in the emerging debate on the lessons to be learnt from the Balkan experience, which will shape thinking on defence and international security far into the new millennium.

This work addresses many persistent misconceptions of what the monitors were for, and why they failed in other roles associated with naval operations of the Civil War (such as the repulse at Charleston, April 7, 1863). Monitors were 'ironclads'- not fort-killers. Their ultimate success is to be measured not in terms of spearheading attacks on fortified Southern ports but in the quieter, much more profound, strategic deterrence of Lord Palmerston's ministry in London, and the British Royal Navy's potential intervention. During the American Civil War, one of the greatest fears of the Union government was that the United Kingdom might intervene on the side of the Confederacy. This book is a unique study that combines a lively and colourful narrative with a fresh interpretation of the American effort to avoid a naval war with Great Britain. The author chronicles the growth and development of the Union "Ironclads," beginning with U.S.S. Monitor, during the American Civil War.Unlike other similar histories, however, the author does not simply recount the battle actions of these metal monsters. Instead, he crafts a fast-paced narrative that focuses on the military men and government officials who drove the decision-making processes, and outlines the international ramifications of the revolution in naval affairs that took place in the 1860s. He demonstrates that Federal ironclads were not constructed solely in response to their Confederate counterparts, but, even more importantly, to counter the ocean-going iron ships of the Royal Navy. The author places the naval developments of the Civil War within the broader context of Anglo-American relations and the rapidly developing international rivalry between the United States and Britain. The wide reaching implications of the technological advances, and the unprecedented expansion of the U.S. Navy are usually depicted as a sidebar to the main events of the Civil War. This work, however, brings a new perspective to this important yet overlooked aspect of diplomacy during this time.

Unique among the D-Day landing beaches in its dangers, Utah Beach saw the US Army's greatest success, namely landing with the fewest casualties of any of the Allied invasion beaches The landing beach closest to Normandy’s largest port, Cherbourg, and regarded by the Germans as the most important Allied objective, Utah was isolated from the other D-Day beaches, meaning that that troops landing there would have to fight alone until a link-up could be achieved. Accordingly, the US First Army committed a powerful landing force, preceded by a night parachute and glider assault, part of the largest night drop ever mounted. Despite wide scattering, the airborne troops secured the critical communications centre of Ste Mere Eglise on D-Day, the first village in Normandy to be liberated. Supported by a devastating air and naval bombardment, although landing on the wrong beach in bad weather, 4th Infantry Division took only 197 casualties out of 23,000 troops that landed on D-Day, and by the early afternoon had begun to link up with the first of the paratroopers.

A detailed analysis of the strategy undertaken by the British Army during WWI. In this collection of essays of incomparable scholarship, Stephen Badsey explores in individual detail how the British Army fought in the First World War, how politics and strategy affected its battles and the decisions of senior commanders such as Douglas Haig, and how these issues were intimately intertwined with the mass media portrayal of the Army to itself and to the British people. Informative, provocative, and often entertaining, based on more than a quarter-century of research, these essays on the British Army in the First World War range through topics from a trench raid to modern television comedy. As a contribution to progressive military history, The British Army in Battle and Its Image 1914-1918 proves that the way the British Army fought and its portrayal through the media cannot be separated. It is one of a growing number of studies which show that, far from being in opposition to each other, cultural history and the history of battle must be combined for the First World War to be properly understood.

This book combines Campaign 5: ‘Ardennes 1944’, Campaign 24: ‘Arnhem 1944’, Campaign 74: ‘The Rhineland 1945’ and Campaign 75: ‘Lorraine 1944’. In the aftermath of the German collapse in the west in the summer of 1944, Allied armies rampaged across France and Belgium. A German counter-attack was crushed by General Patton in Lorraine, and Allied armies closed on the borders of the Reich. The Allied plan to end the war at a stroke ended in bloody failure at Arnhem, but a German offensive in the Ardennes, Hitler's last roll of the dice on the western front, proved equally futile. With German forces bled white, the Allies hurled themselves across the River Rhine to bring the crumbling edifice of Hitler's 1,000-year Reich crashing in ruin.

Reform proposals in consultation paper on 1986 Act, including legal status of maritime military remains, definition of protected places, designation of controlled sites, criminal offences and areas of remaining difficulty.