British Royal Navy

Vladimir Peniakoff: Popski’s Private Army

By John Brown

In September 1942, two patrols of armed jeeps and trucks of the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) raided the German airfield at Barce. Read more

British Royal Navy

Yanks in the RAF: From Eagle Squadron to 4th Fighter Group

by David Alan Johnson

The first of the three Eagle Squadrons was formed at Church Fenton, Yorkshire, in September 1940. The idea of forming an all-American squadron in the RAF was not a wildly popular one— with either the British or the Americans. Read more

British Royal Navy

All Alone: The HMS Glowworm

By Robert Barr Smith

The great waves were huge and black, greedy tentacles of the North Sea clawing and snatching at the battered ships struggling in the icy dark. Read more

British Royal Navy

“Convoy is to Scatter”: Arctic Convoy Disaster

By David H. Lippman

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had made the promise to Soviet Premier Josef Stalin, and Admiral Sir John Tovey of the Royal Navy had to keep it: to sail three convoys loaded with critical supplies from Britain to Russia every two months, with 25 to 35 ships in each convoy. Read more

British Royal Navy

Debacle at Dakar

By David H. Lippman

The director flicked his finger, and General Charles de Gaulle began reading his address into the British Broadcasting Corporation’s microphone, speaking from London to his defeated countrymen across the English Channel, calling upon them to continue resistance in the face of overwhelming German supremacy. Read more

British Royal Navy

The Battle of Narvik: Crippling the Kriegsmarine

By David H. Lippman

The Germans could not believe it. Without suffering the loss of a single soldier or sailor, the German Army and Navy had sailed 1,500 miles through waters dominated by the British Royal Navy and captured Narvik without firing a shot, bagged nearly 500 Norwegian soldiers, seized one of Norway’s major military depots, and even taken five armed British merchant ships and their crews. Read more

British Royal Navy

Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto: Japan’s Naval War Leader

By Michael D. Hull

Brave, urbane, and complex, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was Japan’s greatest naval strategist and the architect of one of the most stunning achievements in the history of modern warfare. Read more

British Royal Navy

The Indian Ocean Raid: Disaster for the Royal Navy

By David H. Lippman

“So this is the Eastern Fleet,” ran Vice Admiral Sir James Fownes Somerville’s signal. “Never mind. Many a good tune is played on an old fiddle.” Read more

British Royal Navy

Raid on Bruneval: Stealing the Enemy’s Eyes

By Kelly Bell

The parachute of aptly named Major J.D. Frost cracked open in the freezing air high above the French Channel coast at 12:45 am, and he commenced drifting down through the moonlit gloom. Read more

British Royal Navy

Undeclared War in the Atlantic

By James I. Marino

Between September 1939 and December 1941, the United States moved from neutral to active belligerent in an undeclared naval war against Nazi Germany. Read more

British Royal Navy

Taking Out the Tirpitz

By Richard Rule

By mid-1942, the towering German battleship Tirpitz stood alone as the largest, most powerful warship in the world. Read more

British Royal Navy

Royal Navy Ravaged

By Michael D. Hull

History was made in the Mediterranean Sea on the night of Monday, November 11, 1940, when the Italian Navy’s battle fleet was devastated at Taranto, off the Ionian coast of southern Italy. Read more

British Royal Navy

Seizing the Altmark

By Joseph M. Horodyski

On Sunday, September 3, 1939, the day that Great Britain and France formally declared war on Germany after the Nazis’ invasion of Poland, the German supply ship Altmark concluded her stay at the refinery center of Port Arthur, Texas, where she had taken on a full cargo of diesel oil, and returned to sea. Read more

British Royal Navy

The S.S. Bremen: Last Voyage of a Luxury Liner

By David Luhrssen

After docking in New York on August 28, 1939, only four days before the outbreak of World War II, Captain Adolf Ahrens of Germany’s North German Lloyd shipping line was faced with a decision. Read more

British Royal Navy

Operation Compass: Masterstroke in the Desert

By John Diamond

Established in the summer of 1939, Field Marshal Sir Archibald Wavell’s Middle East Command encompassed nine countries and parts of two continents, an area of 1,700 miles by 2,000 miles. Read more

British Royal Navy

The Atlantis: The Kriegsmarine’s Last Corsair

By David Lippman

In her previous life, she had been the Hansa-line freighter Goldenfels. She was launched in 1937 and displaced 7,862 tons. Read more

British Royal Navy

The War of Jenkins’ Ear

By John Brown

In the 1700s, the Spanish empire in the Caribbean was a lucrative trade monopoly directed from Madrid, with Cadiz designated as the official port for trade to and from Spain and its colonies. Read more

British Royal Navy

Underwater Training for Operation Overlord

By Kevin M Hymel

British frogmen were the first ground  fighters to engage the enemy on D-Day—and they did it without weapons. Read more

British Royal Navy

USS Midway: Floating Museum in San Diego Harbor

By Christopher Miskimon

A boat trip through San Diego harbor provides visitors with tangible proof of America’s military might. San Diego is one of the U.S. Read more

British Royal Navy

British Naval Disaster at Coronel

By John Protasio

When World War I broke out in August 1914, the captains of the various German warships called their men together to give three cheers for the Kaiser. Read more