The Navy at War 1939-1945

Collins, 1960, Good condition with intact tidy price-clipped dustwrapper, top half of front endpaper ripped out.

In this book the author sets out to give a broad outline of the policies, purposes, successes and failures of the British and Dominion Navies in thie world-wide struggle and to suggest what lessons we may learn from a study of these events. The aythor writes with the same simplicity and ease whether he is describing the movements of ships in a single action or the relation of a whole campaign to the strategy of total war. The narrative is thrilling; the analysis brilliantly clear. this is the more valuable as, aprat from a few set pieces such as the Basttle of the River Plate or the sinking of the Bismarck, the characteristic form of the last war at sea was a long series of convoy actions of which the Battle of the Atlantic was the longest and largest. This book tells how the convoys were fought through to Malta and Murmansk against unrelenting attack from aircraft and submarines. The contribution made by British technology in the shape of Asdic and Radar is fully recognised; but the story is , first and last, of the courage and skill of the officers and men who made victory possible. Although the author has dispensed with the paraphernalia of scholarship, the work rests on a profound and critical study of all the relevant records, British and foreign. And most readers will agree that Captain Roskill has fulfilled his aim of writing 'with honesty towards our own mistakes and with fairness towards our late enemies'...