The Hunting of Force Z
Author : Hough Richard Staff
Publisher :
Page : pages
File Size : 43,91 MB
Release : 1999-07
Category :
ISBN : 9780297645221
Author : Hough Richard Staff
Publisher :
Page : pages
File Size : 43,91 MB
Release : 1999-07
Category :
ISBN : 9780297645221
Author : Richard Hough
Publisher :
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 32,81 MB
Release : 1970
Category :
ISBN :
Author : Richard Hough
Publisher :
Page : 189 pages
File Size : 36,98 MB
Release : 1963
Category : World War, 1939-1945
ISBN :
Author : Richard Hough
Publisher : Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Page : 160 pages
File Size : 27,37 MB
Release : 1999
Category : World War, 1939-1945
ISBN : 9780304352395
Force Z was the name given to the British battlefleet that sailed to Singapore in the autumn of 1941. Churchill himself described it as the best deterrent and the one key weapon that would prevent the Japanese gaining a foothold in the South Pacific. But behind the impressive name lay a less impressive reality - Force Z consisted of only two ships: the battleship Prince of Wales and the 25-year-old cruiser Repulse. In a time when the days of the battleship as an effective weapon in maritime warfare were numbered, such an action proved to be a terrible mistake. This work traces the history behind this tragic bluff. From the end of World War I to the inevitable sinking of these two ships, it is a comprehensive history of the decline of the battleship in modern warfare, culminating in the battle that proved finally that a navy without air cover could not survive as an effective fighting force.
Author : Richard Hough
Publisher : London, Collins 1963.
Page : 270 pages
File Size : 21,34 MB
Release : 1963
Category : History
ISBN :
Author : Richard Alexander Hough
Publisher :
Page : 189 pages
File Size : 35,76 MB
Release : 1978
Category : World War, 1939-1945
ISBN : 9780006350453
Author : Richard Alexander Hough
Publisher :
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 43,73 MB
Release : 1974
Category : World War, 1939-1945
ISBN :
Author : Angus Konstam
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 97 pages
File Size : 24,86 MB
Release : 2021-01-21
Category : History
ISBN : 1472846613
A history and analysis of one of the most dramatic moments in both air power and naval history. With the sinking of HMS Prince of Wales and Repulse, no battleship was safe on the open ocean, and the aircraft took its crown as the most powerful maritime weapon In late 1941, war was looming with Japan, and Britain's empire in southeast Asia was at risk. The British government decided to send Force Z, which included the state-of-the-art battleship Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser Repulse, to bolster the naval defences of Singapore, and provide a mighty naval deterrent to Japanese aggression. These two powerful ships arrived in Singapore on 2 December - five days before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. But crucially, they lacked air cover. On 9 December Japanese scout planes detected Force Z's approach in the Gulf of Thailand. Unlike at Pearl Harbor, battleships at sea could manoeuvre, and their anti-aircraft defences were ready. But it did no good. The Japanese dive-bombers and torpedo-bombers were the most advanced in the world, and the battle was one-sided. Strategically, the loss of Force Z was a colossal disaster for the British, and one that effectively marked the end of its empire in the East. But even more importantly, the sinking marked the last time that battleships were considered to be the masters of the ocean. From that day on, air power rather than big guns would be the deciding factor in naval warfare.
Author : Martin Middlebrook
Publisher : Penguin Uk
Page : 366 pages
File Size : 46,43 MB
Release : 2001
Category : History
ISBN : 9780141391199
On Wednesday 10 December 1941, the third day of the war with Japan, two Royal Navy capital ships were sunk off Malaya by air torpedo attack. They had not requested the air support that could have saved them and 840 men died in the battleship HMS Prince of Wales and the battle cruiser HMS Repulse.
Author : Gavin Mortimer
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 241 pages
File Size : 13,11 MB
Release : 2022-04-14
Category : History
ISBN : 1472847075
Leading expert Gavin Mortimer tells the remarkable origin story of a wartime special forces unit that defied the odds. Z Special Unit, one of the most intrepid but arguably the most unsung of Allied Special Forces of the Second World War waged a guerrilla war against Japan for two years in the south-west Pacific. On some of their 81 operations Z Special Unit slipped into enemy harbours in canoes and silently mined ships before vanishing into the night; on others they parachuted into the dense Borneo jungle to fight with headhunters against the Japanese and on one occasion they landed on an Indonesian island and smuggled out the pro-Allied sultan from under Japanese noses. The Japanese weren't the only adversary that Z Special Unit encountered in the brutal terrain of the Pacific. In the mango swamps of Borneo and the dense jungle of Papua New Guinea they were faced with venomous snakes, man-eating crocodiles and deadly diseases. But it was the enemy soldiers who proved the most ruthless foe, beheading those Z Special Unit commandos who fell into their hands. Drawing on veteran interviews as well as operational reports and recently declassified SOE files, Gavin Mortimer explores the incredible history of this remarkable special forces unit and the band of commandoes that defied the odds.