Mark Lardas – лучшие книги

A comprehensively illustrated account of the Atlanta-class cruisers, warships that found a surprising key role in the Pacific War as the US Navy's superb antiaircraft warships.

In the late 1930s, the US Navy created a class of small, light cruisers intended as a versatile destroyer leader. The Atlantas could provide antiaircraft support, lead and launch torpedo attacks, serve as antisubmarine vessels, and outgun other light warships in a surface engagement. The wartime reality was different. In every surface action they fought, they found themselves pitted against bigger cruisers (or even battleships) instead of the destroyers they were designed to defeat.

In this book, naval historian Mark Lardas explains that despite their flaws, they proved one of the most useful warships in the US Navy: with a main battery of sixteen 5in guns, they proved to be superb antiaircraft cruisers. From the battle of Midway onwards, they protected the Navy's most valuable ships – its aircraft carriers – so effectively that later Atlantas were built to a modified design as specialist antiaircraft ships. The Navy even ordered a follow-on class postwar and considered building a “super-Atlanta,” armed only with heavy antiaircraft guns.

Packed with illustrations, this book examines the history, development, and modifications of these unusual warships, and their impact on the Pacific War.

Fully illustrated, this book pits US Navy submarines against the aircraft carriers of the Imperial Japanese Navy at the height of World War II.

Before World War II the world's navies envisioned the submarine as a tool to hunt and kill cruisers and capital ships (aircraft carriers and battleships). Instead, they became best known for their abilities as commerce raiders. Yet hunting capital ships remained an important auxiliary role for the US submarine force in World War II. Featuring specially commissioned artwork and mapping alongside carefully chosen archive illustrations, this absorbing study focuses on five revealing battles between US submarines and Japanese aircraft carriers during 1942–44.

At first, a combination of factors – bad torpedoes, poor US tactics, and plain bad luck – foiled every US submarine attack on a Japanese capital ship in 1942 and 1943. But over the space of six months in 1944 – from June through November of that year – US submarines sank three of Japan's largest aircraft carriers as well as a battleship. Thereafter, Japanese capital ships clung to port or sheltered waters beyond the reach of submarines.

In this book, Mark Lardas explains how the technologies and procedures employed by both sides helped to determine the victor in five revealing clashes, from the battle of Midway in June 1942 to the sinking of Shinano, the largest warship sunk by a submarine, in November 1944.

An illustrated study of the clashes between B-29s conducting night raids on Japan and the Japanese nightfighters protecting the Home Islands from 1944–45.

The USAAF's B-29-led strategic bombing offensive against Japan succeeded when XX Bomber Command switched from high-level daytime precision bombing to low-level night time area bombing. The latter tactic required Superfortresses to attack their target individually, without a formation or escorting fighters for protection. Despite this, Japanese nightfighters proved unable to stop the B-29s.

In this study, Mark Lardas examines the capabilities of the aircraft involved, and reveals the conditions under which both sides fought. He evaluates the cutting-edge technology of both sides and how it affected the outcome of the battle. Maps, tactical diagrams, photographs and specially commissioned artwork bring the action to life as the individual US bombers and Japanese nightfighters fight a classic military duel.

The first book to examine the battleship-led 1941 Pacific Fleet as it was intended to fight. Packed with illustrations, this study explains how the US Navy saw the approaching war unfolding.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the Pacific Fleet was the most powerful in the US Navy. It was still dominated by battleships, but since the late 1930s had been developing naval aviation and integrating them with its battleship-led doctrine.

This book is the first to examine the Pacific Fleet as it was intended to fight, and how it had been training and preparing in the months leading up to December 7, 1941. Naval historian Mark Lardas explains how, contrary to modern assumptions, it was not wedded to the battleship, but was hedging its bets, building up both its carrier and battleship strength. Most crucially, it had also been building and honing a massive fleet train, enabling the Pacific Fleet to operate easily thousands of miles from home. It was this foundation that enabled the Pacific Fleet to adapt so rapidly to the new world of carrier-led naval warfare, and first check and then defeat the IJN.

With artwork, photos and diagrams, this is a portrait of 1941 in the Pacific Fleet, the last time and place when battleship doctrine held sway. Pearl Harbor would shatter this, and herald the start of the carrier era. The blow fell heavily on the US Pacific Fleet, but it and its successors would emerge more powerful than ever.

With ship profiles and original artwork, this study explores the warships that fought World War II's last pure surface battle, the battle itself, and why the outnumbered US Navy prevailed.

The Battle of the Komandorski Islands was unique among World War II naval battles. It was the last daytime naval surface battle of World War II where aircraft played no role, and saw a squadron of US Navy cruisers and destroyers engage their Japanese counterparts over a convoy to reinforce Attu and Kiska.

Exploring the warships, the battle, and why it was won, naval expert Mark Lardas explains that due to an intelligence failure, the Japanese escort was twice the size expected, with the US outnumbered 2:1 in heavy and light cruisers. Although both sides had the same number of destroyers (four each) the Japanese destroyers were newer and more powerful than their US counterparts.

A 12-hour brawl of a surface action took place. Despite being badly outnumbered and badly outgunned – and even though the largest US ship was dead in the water at one point – the US Navy emerged victorious. Illustrated with archive photos, profiles of all the major warships involved, and action scenes illustrating key moments in the battle, this book explains how the US victory was achieved, and particularly highlights the importance of superior damage control.

The full history of how the United States targeted and destroyed the Japanese capital from the air, in a ten-month long campaign by the US Army Air Force and the US Navy.

In November 1944, the US Army Air Force launched a 111-plane B-29 strike against Tokyo, the first raid since the morale-boosting Doolittle Raid of 1942. From then until August 13, 1945, the United States would attack Tokyo 25 times, 20 from B-29s based in the Marianas and five from US Navy carrier task forces. The campaign included the single deadliest air raid in human history, when around 100,000 people were killed by the firestorm created by the Operation Meetinghouse raid of March 10, 1945.

This book, the first to examine the full history of the United States' air campaign against the greatest target in Japan, looks at the USAAF's and US Navy's efforts to use air power to eliminate Tokyo's strategic value to the Empire. It considers how the campaign developed from daylight bombing to firebombing and anti-ship mining, and finally how the target was handed over to the US Navy, whose carrier-based bombers and fighter-bombers continued to strike Tokyo during July and August 1945.

Using specially commissioned battlescenes, strategic maps and diagrams, this volume presents a detailed picture of how Tokyo was vanquished from the air.

An absorbing study of the duels fought between the US Navy's escort warships and Hitler's U-boats between December 1941 and May 1945.

Although the Battle of the Atlantic lasted several years, its most critical phase began once the United States entered World War II. By December 1941, the British had mastered the U-boat threat in the Eastern Atlantic, only to see the front abruptly expand to regions the US Navy would patrol, chiefly the Atlantic Seaboard. Unless the US Navy overcame the U-boat threat, the Allies would struggle to win.

The Battle of the Atlantic was made up of thousands of individual duels: aircraft against U-boats, aircraft against aircraft, aircraft against ships-but most crucially, ships against U-boats. The individual clashes between Germany's U-boats and the Allied warships escorting the vital convoys often comprised one-on-one actions. These stories provide the focus of this detailed work. The technical details of the U-boats, destroyers, and destroyer escorts involved are explored in stunning illustrations, including ship and submarine profiles and weaponry artworks, and key clashes are brought to life in dramatic battlescenes. Among the clashes covered are including USS Kearny vs. U-568, USS Roper (DD-147) vs U-85, USS Eugene E. Elmore (DE-686) vs U-549, and USS Atherton (DE-169) vs U-853.

A detailed and fascinating exploration of the 1945 US combined land, naval and air operation to retake Corregidor and the other Japanese-held islands in Manila Bay from a determined and well-entrenched enemy.

The islands guarding the entrance to Manila Bay, Luzon, had been seized by the Japanese in May 1942. In February 1945, US forces were back, and closed in on Manila from the north and south against heavy Japanese resistance. A joint US parachute and amphibious assault was planned to capture the largest island Corregidor, using the much-reinforced 503rd PRCT and elements of the 24th Infantry Division and 2nd Engineer Special Brigade. Facing them were over 6,000 Japanese troops recently evacuated from Bataan, where they had been cut off by advancing US forces. General MacArthur desired the island, once a symbol of American defiance, to be liberated with a flourish.

This superbly illustrated work examines the ambitious US assault on Corregidor, which witnessed the most dangerous and risky parachute drop in airborne history, and vicious, desperate fighting by the defenders as they sought to prevent American troops from taking the island. It also covers the recapture of other islands defending Manila Bay: El Fraile/Fort Drum, Caballo, and Carabao.

A history of the US Navy's remarkable 1945 South China Sea raid against the Japanese, the first time in history that a carrier fleet dared to rampage through coastal waters.

As 1945 opened, Japan was fighting defensively everywhere. As the Allies drew closer to the Home Islands, risks of Japanese air and sea attack on the US Navy carrier force increased. US forces wanted to take the island of Luzon which provided a base for Japanese aircraft from Formosa (Taiwan) and Indochina, and from where attacks could easily be devastating for the invasion fleet. US Naval Intelligence also believed Japanese battleships Ise and Hyuga were operating out of Cam Ranh Bay. A fast carrier sweep through the South China Sea was a potential answer with the bonus that it would strike the main nautical highway for cargo from Japan's conquests in Southeast Asia.

Task Force 38 would spend the better part of two weeks marauding through the South China Sea during Operation Gratitude, a month-long sweep of the area, which launched air strikes into harbors in Indochina, the Chinese coast and Formosa, while targeting shipping in the high-traffic nautical highway. By the time the Task Force exited the South China Sea, over 300,000 tons of enemy shipping and dozens of Japanese warships had been sunk. With follow-up air strikes against Japanese harbors and airfields in Formosa and the Ryukyu Islands, the success of the sweep was unprecedented.

Using detailed battlescenes, maps, bird's eye views, and diagrams of air strikes at Luzon, this intriguing account of Task Force 38's reign in the South China Sea proved that aircraft carriers could dominate the land-based air power of the fading Japanese. From the Korean War through to Vietnam, to the campaigns in Iraq, aircraft carriers could sail safely offshore, knowing their aircraft would prevail on both sea and land.

An illustrated examination of the role played by the Sunderland as an antisubmarine aircraft during the Battle of the Atlantic, focusing on the key battles of the Biscay campaign in 1943–44.

The Sunderland is an iconic British aircraft of World War II, and the only RAF Coastal Command type to perform frontline service throughout the conflict. Its prime target – the German U-boat – was a deadly adversary to Allied warships and other oceangoing vessels, but proved vulnerable to detection and air attacks from the radar-equipped Sunderland. This book examines the respective advantages and drawbacks of these two maritime predators by providing a vivid analysis of their historic engagement during the Biscay campaign in 1943–44.

Drawing upon first-hand accounts of this famous duel, Mark Lardas tells the story of how highly skilled Sunderland crews took the fight to an often elusive enemy and helped RAF Coastal Command defeat the U-boat threat. Maps, tactical diagrams, photographs and specially commissioned artwork bring the action to life as the Sunderland's losses – and eventual victory – in the Bay of Biscay play out in fascinating, insightful detail.