Description:

The Second World War was a truly global conflict and maritime 'sea power' played a major role in every theatre of operations, with participants in those sea battles coming from almost every Axis and Allied Nation involved in the war.

Land campaigns depended on supplies transported by sea, and victory or defeat depended on the outcome of the mainly distant naval battles fighting to keep those invaluable sea lines of communication open and flowing in all conditions.

So Leo Marriott’s highly illustrated multi volume account of these struggles sets naval actions in the wider strategic context as well as giving graphic accounts of what happened in each engagement from those officers and ratings of all sides involved in this most deadly form of warfare.

This first volume in this series concentrates on the forces operationally commanded by the Royal Navy, including units of the British Commonwealth of Nations like Canada, Australia and Aotearoa (New Zealand), and the occupied territories 'free naval forces' like Poland, Norway and The Netherlands who all so ably assisted in the confrontation with the ships and submarines of the German Kriegsmarine and the Italian Regia Marina alongside other smaller but no less deadly Axis Naval Forces. The campaign theatres covered include 'The Battle of the Atlantic', The Battle to Support Russian forces crossing over the Arctic Ocean to Murmansk, The Mediterranean Convoys to the besieged Island of Malta and the Naval Battles all over the Mediterranean Sea. Some of the battles covered include 1939's 'Battle of the River Plate', 1941's Campaign against the KMS Bismarck, The disastrous 1942 losses of the Russian Bound Convoy PQ17 to the Luftwaffe Bombers and the Kriegsmarine U-Boats operating out of Norway and the successes and losses to Italian and German Aircrew during 1942's 'Operation Pedestal' convoy to Malta.

All these and so much more are among the episodes described in vivid detail and illustrated with a selection of 120 striking photographs, some of which have never been seen before. This concise but wide-ranging multi volume introduction to the naval war emphasises the sheer scale of the 1939-45 naval conflict, showing how it spread out to encompass almost every ocean on the globe, and shows the direct impact of each naval battle upon the overall course of the war.

Volume Two is set for release around Jun-Jul 2022 and it will cover the war in the Far East and the Pacific theatres by Allied and Axis Naval powers from 1941 and is planned to cover events ranging from the loss of Hong Kong, Malaya, Singapore and Java through to the Aircraft Carrier attacks on Darwin Australia and the Submarine attacks all around Australia and Aotearoa , The Battle of the Solomon's and the Sea Campaign against Rabaul and New Guinea.

Leo Marriott has written numerous books with Pen & Sword Books on aviation, naval and military subjects including Treaty Cruisers, Catapult Aircraft, Jets at Sea, Early Jet Fighters: British and American 1944-1954, Early Jet Bombers 1944-1954, Early Jet Fighters 1944-1954: The Soviet Union and Europe, Essex Class Aircraft Carriers 1943-1991 and Naval Battles of the Second World War: The Atlantic and the Mediterranean. He is now retired after a fifty Plus years at sea with the RN and as an air traffic controller. Apart from aviation and naval history, his other interests include diving, sailing, photography and painting.