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Author: Paddy Ashdown
Publisher: Aurum
ISBN: 1781310831
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 552
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Book Description
The complete story of the remarkable canoe raid on German ships in Bordeaux Harbour – by the man who himself served in the Special Boat Squadron. In 1942, before El Alamein turned the tide of war, the German merchant fleet was re-supplying its war machine with impunity. So Operation Frankton, a daring and secret raid, was launched by Mountbatten’s Combined Operations and led by the enigmatic ‘Blondie’ Hasler – to paddle ‘Cockleshell’ canoes right into Bordeaux harbour and sink the ships at anchor. It was a desperately hazardous mission from the start – dropped by submarine to canoe some hundred miles up the Gironde into the heart of Vichy France, surviving terrifying tidal races, only to face the biggest challenge of all: escaping across the Pyrenees. Fewer than half the men made it to Bordeaux; only four laid their mines; just two got back alive. But the most damage was done to the Germans’ sense of impregnability. Paddy Ashdown, himself a member of the Royal Marines’ elite Special Boat Squadron formed as a consequence of Frankton, has always been fascinated by this classic story of bravery and ingenuity - as a young man even meeting his hero Hasler once. Now, after researching previously unseen archives and tracing surviving witnesses, he has written the definitive account of the raid. The real truth, he discovers – a deplorable tale of Whitehall rivalry and breakdowns in communication – serves only to make the achievements of the ‘Cockleshell’ heroes all the more heroic.
Author: Paddy Ashdown
Publisher: Aurum
ISBN: 1781310831
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 552
Get Book Here
Book Description
The complete story of the remarkable canoe raid on German ships in Bordeaux Harbour – by the man who himself served in the Special Boat Squadron. In 1942, before El Alamein turned the tide of war, the German merchant fleet was re-supplying its war machine with impunity. So Operation Frankton, a daring and secret raid, was launched by Mountbatten’s Combined Operations and led by the enigmatic ‘Blondie’ Hasler – to paddle ‘Cockleshell’ canoes right into Bordeaux harbour and sink the ships at anchor. It was a desperately hazardous mission from the start – dropped by submarine to canoe some hundred miles up the Gironde into the heart of Vichy France, surviving terrifying tidal races, only to face the biggest challenge of all: escaping across the Pyrenees. Fewer than half the men made it to Bordeaux; only four laid their mines; just two got back alive. But the most damage was done to the Germans’ sense of impregnability. Paddy Ashdown, himself a member of the Royal Marines’ elite Special Boat Squadron formed as a consequence of Frankton, has always been fascinated by this classic story of bravery and ingenuity - as a young man even meeting his hero Hasler once. Now, after researching previously unseen archives and tracing surviving witnesses, he has written the definitive account of the raid. The real truth, he discovers – a deplorable tale of Whitehall rivalry and breakdowns in communication – serves only to make the achievements of the ‘Cockleshell’ heroes all the more heroic.
Author: Peter Huchthausen
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0142004650
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289
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Book Description
From the evacuation of Saigon in 1975 to the end of the twentieth century, the United States committed its forces to more than a dozen military operations. Offering a fresh analysis of the Iranian hostage rescue attempt, the invasions of Granada and Panama, the first Gulf War, the missions in Somalia and Bosnia, and more, author and distinguished U.S. naval captain Peter Huchthausen presents a detailed history of each military engagement through eyewitness accounts, exhaustive research, and his unique insider perspective as an intelligence expert. This timely and riveting military history is “a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the nature of war today” (Stephen Trent Smith).
Author: Alfred Draper
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 408
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Book Description
The secret operation that transferred British gold and securities to Canada.
Author: Max Hastings
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062953621
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 436
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Book Description
Best Nonfiction of 2020 -- Kirkus Reviews One of the most lauded historians of our time returns to the Second World War in this magnificent retelling of the awe-inspiring raid on German dams conducted by the Royal Army Force’s 617 Squadron. The attack on Nazi Germany’s dams on May 17, 1943, was one of the most remarkable feats in military history. The absurdly young men of the Royal Air Force’s 617 Squadron set forth in cold blood and darkness, without benefit of electronic aids, to fly lumbering heavy bombers straight and level towards a target at a height above the water less than the length of a bowling alley. Yet this story—and the later wartime experience of the 617 Squadron—has never been told in full. Max Hastings takes us back to the May 1943 raid to reveal how the truth of that night is considerably different from the popularized account most people know. The RAF had identified the Ruhr dams as strategic objectives as far back as 1938; in those five years Wing Commander Guy Gibson formed and trained the 617 Squadron. Hastings observes that while the dropping of Wallis’s mines provided the dramatic climax, only two of the eight aircraft lost came down over the dams—the rest were shot down on the flight to, or back from, the mission. And while the 617 Squadron’s valor is indisputable, the ultimate industrial damage caused by the dam raid was actually rather modest. In 1943, these brave men caught the imagination of the world and uplifted the weary spirits of the British people. Their achievement unnerved the Nazi high command, and caused them to expend large resources on dam defenses—making the mission a success. An example of Churchill’s “military theatre” at its best, what 617 Squadron did was an extraordinary and heroic achievement, and a triumph of British ingenuity and technology—a story to be told for generations to come. Operation Chastise includes three 8-page black-and-white photo inserts and 6 maps.
Author: Barbara Park
Publisher: Yearling
ISBN: 0307797066
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 128
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Book Description
Poor Oscar Winkle! Ever since his little brother, Robert (not-so-affectionately known as Slobert), showed up seven and a half years ago, he's been specializing in ruining Oscar's life. So he comes up with Operation: Dump the Chump, a brilliant scheme to get even with the pesky creep.
Author: Paddy Ashdown
Publisher: William Collins
ISBN: 9780008140823
Category : World War, 1939-1945
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
"'Game of Spies' tells the story of a lethal spy triangle between 1942 and 1944 in Bordeaux - and of France's greatest betrayal by aristocratic and right-wing Resistance leader Andre Grandclement. The story centres on three men: one British, one French and one German and the duel they fought out in an atmosphere of collaboration, betrayal and assassination, in which comrades sold fellow comrades, Allied agents and downed pilots to the Germans, as casually as they would a bottle of wine. It is a story of SOE, treachery, bed-hopping and executions in the city labelled 'la plus collaboratrice' in the whole of France."--Publisher description.
Author: Robert Lyman
Publisher: Quercus
ISBN: 1623652626
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288
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Book Description
During the Second World War, it is hard to imagine a situation where the British High Command could think that one of the only ways they could attack Hitler was to send ten canoeists with limpet mines to paddle one hundred miles up the Gironde estuary, in the middle of winter, in an attempt to sink German blockade ships in Bordeaux harbor. Yet this is precisely what happened in 1942. The man who gave the go-ahead for the audacious commando raid--Lord Louis Mountbatten, head of Combined Operations--fully anticipated that all ten men would die in the attempt. Mountbatten wasn't far wrong--two ripped their collapsible canoes as they were manhandling them out of the submarine; two drowned when their canoes capsized entering the Gironde estuary; and a further six were captured by the Germans and later executed. By complete chance, the two canoeists who managed to escape--Major "Blondie" Hasler and Marine Bill Sparks--stumbled into the arms of the French resistance. Once in their care, Hasler and Sparks made their way across France and into Spain, crossing the Pyrenees in the company (though they did not know it) of a Gestapo agent intent on bringing down the resistance network. Operation Suicide is the first account of this enthralling raid for over fifty years. In utilizing primary source material, including detailed German records captured by the British in 1944 (which remained censored until 1976), Robert Lyman brings to life one of the most courageous and dramatic events to take place in the darkest days of the Second World War.
Author: Martin Watts
Publisher: Amberley Publishing Limited
ISBN: 1445663198
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 277
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Book Description
Combining a personal narrative with tactical and technical analysis, this book casts new light on the Royal Marines during the Second World War.
Author: Martin Kerby
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319969862
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 586
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Book Description
This handbook explores a diverse range of artistic and cultural responses to modern conflict, from Mons in the First World War to Kabul in the twenty-first century. With over thirty chapters from an international range of contributors, ranging from the UK to the US and Australia, and working across history, art, literature, and media, it offers a significant interdisciplinary contribution to the study of modern war, and our artistic and cultural responses to it. The handbook is divided into three parts. The first part explores how communities and individuals responded to loss and grief by using art and culture to assimilate the experience as an act of survival and resilience. The second part explores how conflict exerts a powerful influence on the expression and formation of both individual, group, racial, cultural and national identities and the role played by art, literature, and education in this process. The third part moves beyond the actual experience of conflict and its connection with issues of identity to explore how individuals and society have made use of art and culture to commemorate the war. In this way, it offers a unique breadth of vision and perspective, to explore how conflicts have been both represented and remembered since the early twentieth century.
Author: John Grehan
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1473828554
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 236
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Book Description
From the moment the German army moved quietly into Luxemburg on 2 August 1914, to the Armistice on 11 November 1918, the fighting on the Western Front in France and Flanders never stopped. There were quiet periods, just as there were the most intense, savage, huge-scale battles.The war on the Western Front can be thought of as being in three phases: first, a war of movement as Germany attacked France and the Allies sought to halt it; second, the lengthy and terribly costly siege warfare as the entrenched lines proved impossible to crack (late 1914 to mid–1918); and finally a return to mobile warfare as the Allies applied lessons and technologies forged in the previous years.As with previous wars, British Commanders-in-Chief of a theatre of war or campaign were obliged to report their activities and achievements to the War Office in the form of a despatch and those written from the Western Front provide a fascinating, detailed and compelling overview of this part of the First World War.
