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showing 4,214 library results for 'navy'

British naval power in the East, 1794-1805 : the command of Admiral Peter Rainier /Peter A. Ward. "When war broke out with France in 1793, there immediately arose the threat of a renewed French challenge to British supremacy in India. This security problem was compounded in 1795 when the French overran the Netherlands and the extremely valuable Dutch trade routes and Dutch colonies, including the Cape of Good Hope and what is now Indonesia, fell under French control. The task of securing British interests in the East was a formidable one: the distances were huge, communication with London could take years, there were problems marshalling resources, and fine diplomatic skills were needed to keep independent rulers on the British side and to ensure full co-operation from the East India Company. The person charged with overseeing this formidable task was Admiral Peter Rainier (1741-1808), commander of the Royal Navy in the Indian Ocean and the East from 1794 to 1805. This book discusses the enormous difficulties Rainier faced. It outlines his career, explaining how he carried out his role with exceptional skill; how he succeeded in securing British interests in the East - whilst avoiding the need to fight a major battle; how he enhanced Britain's commanding position at sea; and how, additionally, in co-operation with the Governor-General, Richard Wellesley, he further advanced Britain's position in India itself."--Provided by the publisher. 2013. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 92RAINIER
Voices in flight : the Royal Naval Air Service during the Great War /by Malcolm Smith. "Following in the same style as his previous book of Fleet Air Arm recollections, Malcolm Smith has collected a compendium of reminiscences from pilots who flew for the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines during the First World War. He includes first-hand testimonies from pilots manning early seaplane stations, an enthralling account from F.J. Rutland (the 'Rutland of Jutland'), who became the first pilot to take off in a Sopwith Pup from a platform on the roof of one of HMS Yarmouth's gun turrets, the true tale behind Rudyard Kipling's short story 'A Flight of Fact' (concerning Guy Duncan-Smith's experience of becoming marooned in the Maldives following a dramatic shoot-down), amongst many other personalized and illuminating stories. All these anecdotes are drawn from the extensive archive maintained by the Fleet Air Arm Museum at Yeovilton, Somerset. The archive contains an enormous quantity of material, in the form of handwritten diaries, transcripts, log books and documentation of many kinds. Alongside the written material, the Museum maintains an unrivaled photographic archive and a representative sample of these images is included in the book. Excerpts from diaries, transcripts of spoken first-hand accounts and other recorded narratives make up the bulk of the book, with whole chapters dedicated to some of the most vocal members to see service during the course of the RNAS's Great War history. Guy Leather, a pilot destined to track an impressive trajectory with the RNAS features in one such chapter; his day to day accounts relay the full gamut of pilot experience at this time. This humane and thoughtful consolidation of pilot reflections is sure to appeal broadly, particularly as we approach the one hundredth year anniversary of the First World War."--Provided by the publisher. 2014. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 358.38"1914/1918"
Fighters over the Fleet : naval air defence from biplanes to the Cold War /Norman Friedman. Fighters Over the Fleet is an account of the parallel evolution of naval fighters for fleet air defense and the ships they sought to defend. This volume concentrates on the three main advocates of carrier warfare: the Royal Navy, the U.S. Navy, and the Imperial Japanese Navy. Fighters Over the Fleet is an account of the parallel evolution of naval fighters for fleet air defense and the ships they sought to defend. This volume concentrates on the three main advocates of carrier warfare: the Royal Navy, the U.S. Navy, and the Imperial Japanese Navy. Fighters Over the Fleet is an account of the parallel evolution of naval fighters for fleet air defense and the ships they sought to defend. This volume concentrates on the three main advocates of carrier warfare: the Royal Navy, the U.S. Navy, and the Imperial Japanese Navy. Because radar was not invented until the mid-1930s, fleet air defense was a primitive effort for flyers during the 1920s. Once the innovative system was developed and utilized, organized air defense became viable. Thus major naval-air battles of the Second World War, like Midway, the 'Pedestal' convoy, the Philippine Sea and Okinawa are portrayed as tests of the new technology. However, even radar was ultimately found wanting by the Kamikaze campaigns, which led to postwar moves toward computer control and new kinds of fighters. After 1945, the novel threats of nuclear weapons and stand-off missiles compounded the difficulties of naval air defense. The second half of the book covers the U.S. and Royal Navies? attempts to resolve these problems by examining the U.S. experience in Vietnam and British operations during the Falklands War. The book then turns to the ultimate U.S. development of techniques and technology to fight the Outer Air Battle in the 1980s before concluding with the current state of technology supported carrier fighters.--Provided by the publisher. 2016. • FOLIO • 1 copy available. 623.7
Torpedo : inventing the military-industrial complex in the United States and Great Britain /Katherine C. Epstein. "When President Eisenhower referred to the "military-industrial complex" in his 1961 Farewell Address, he summed up in a phrase the merger of government and industry that dominated the Cold War United States. In this bold reappraisal, Katherine Epstein uncovers the origins of the military-industrial complex in the decades preceding World War I, as the United States and Great Britain struggled to perfect a crucial new weapon: the self-propelled torpedo. Torpedoes epitomized the intersection of geopolitics, globalization, and industrialization at the turn of the twentieth century. They threatened to revolutionize naval warfare by upending the delicate balance among the world's naval powers. They were bought and sold in a global marketplace, and they were cutting-edge industrial technologies. Building them, however, required substantial capital investments and close collaboration among scientists, engineers, businessmen, and naval officers. To address these formidable challenges, the U.S. and British navies created a new procurement paradigm: instead of buying finished armaments from the private sector or developing them from scratch at public expense, they began to invest in private-sector research and development. The inventions emerging from torpedo R&D sparked legal battles over intellectual property rights that reshaped national security law. Blending military, legal, and business history with the history of science and technology, Torpedo recasts the role of naval power in the run-up to World War I and exposes how national security can clash with property rights in the modern era."--Provided by the publisher. [2014]. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 623.946(42:73)
HMS Victory pocket manual 1805 : Admiral Nelson's flagship at Trafalgar /Peter Goodwin. "This new addition to the best-selling Conway pocket-book range features Admiral Nelson's fully preserved flagship HMS Victory, the most tangible symbol of the Royal Navy's greatest battle off Cape Trafalgar on October 21st 1805. In the HMS Victory Pocket Manual, Peter Goodwin adopts a fresh approach to explain the workings of the only surviving 'line of battle' ship of the Napoleonic Wars. And, as Victory was engaged in battle during only two per cent of her active service, the book also provides a glimpse into life and work at sea during the other ninety-eight per cent of the time. This volume presents answers to questions such as: 'What types of wood were used in building Victory?'; 'What was Victory's longest' voyage?'; 'How many shots were fired from her guns at Trafalgar?'; 'How many boats did Victory carry?'; 'What was prize money?'; 'What was grog?'; 'When did her career as a fighting ship end?', and 'How many people visit Victory each year?'. It gives a full history of the world's most famous warship through a highly accessible pocket-book format. The book Includes a pertinent and varied selection of contemporary documents and records to explain the day-to-day running of a three-decker Georgian warship. The leading historian of the sailing man of war, Peter Goodwin was technical and historical advisor to HMS Victory in Portsmouth for more than 20 years, and is in a unique position to investigate and interpret not only the ship's structure but also the essential aspects of shipboard life: victualling, organisation, discipline, domestic arrangements and medical care."--Provided by the publisher. 2017. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 623.82VICTORY
Faces of the Civil War Navies : An album of Union and Confederate sailors /Ronald S. Coddington "During the American Civil War, more than one hundred thousand men fought on ships at sea or on one of America's great inland rivers. There were no large-scale fleet engagements, yet the navies, particularly the Union Navy, did much to define the character of the war and affect its length. The first hostile shots roared from rebel artillery at Charleston Harbor. Along the Mississippi River and other inland waterways across the South, Union gunboats were often the first to arrive in deadly enemy territory. In the Gulf of Mexico and along the Atlantic seaboard, blockaders in blue floated within earshot of gray garrisons that guarded vital ports. And on the open seas, rebel raiders wreaked havoc on civilian shipping. In Faces of the Civil War Navies, renowned researcher and Civil War photograph collector Ronald S. Coddington focuses his considerable skills on the Union and Confederate navies. Using identifiable cartes de visite of common sailors on both sides of the war, many of them never before published, Coddington uncovers the personal histories of each individual who looked into the eye of the primitive camera. These unique narratives are drawn from military and pension records, letters, diaries, period newspapers, and other primary sources. In addition to presenting the personal stories of seventy-seven intrepid volunteers, Coddington also focuses on the momentous naval events that ushered in an era of ironclad ships and other technical innovations. The fourth volume in Coddington's series on Civil War soldiers, this microhistory will appeal to anyone with an interest in the Civil War, social history, or photography. The narratives and photographs in Faces of the Civil War Navies shed new light on a lesser-known part of our American story. Taken collectively, these "snapshots" remind us that the history of war is not merely a chronicle of campaigns won and lost, it is the collective personal odysseys of thousands of individual life stories."--Provided by the publisher. 2016. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 355.49"1861/1865"(73)