Pen & Sword Military Classics

In the Middle Ages the castle was an important military and administrative center, essentially utilitarian in its design and in the purposes it served. Because it played so central a role in medieval history, and because the wealth of material is so great, the author has concentrated on English seiges undertaken in the period from the Norman Conquest to the War of the Roses. This includes many dramatic actions fought on the continental dominions of the English Crown such as Chateau Gaillard and Rouen. Drawing from contemporary records and his own inspection of sites, Philip Warner's narrative explores the skills of the architect, the engineer and the miner, as well as the courage of troops and their commanders.

John Killen's exhaustive work is a study of German air power between 1915 and 1945, from the early days of flying when Immelmann, Boelke, Richtofen and other First World War aces fought and died to give Germany air supremacy, to the nightmare existence of the Luftwaffe as the Third Reich plunged headlong to destruction. Here are the aircraft: the frail biplanes and triplanes of the Kaiser's war; the great Lufthansa aircraft and airships of the turbulent Thirties; the monoplanes designed to help Hitler in his conquest of Europe. Here are the generals who forged the air weapon of the Luftwaffe - the swaggering Goering, the playboy Udet, the ebullient Kesselring and the scapegoat Jeschonnek; here, too, are the pilots who tried to keep faith with their Fatherland despite overwhelming odds; Adolf Galland, Werner Molders, Joachim Marseille and Hanna Reitsch. Not least are the actions fought by the Luftwaffe from the Spanish Civil War to the Battle of Britain, through the bloody struggle for Crete and the siege of Stalingrad to the fearful twilight over Berlin.

A riveting account of the World War II naval career of the man who did more to win the Battle of the Atlantic than any other officer at sea. Captain F. J. Walker, RN, dedicated his life to defeating the Germans-and Karl Dönitz, Führer der U-Boote, in particular-by containing the U-boats, wearing them down, and sending them back to their bunkers. He was a formidable figure and one of the greatest fighting captains in the Royal Navy, sinking twenty U-boats. For this he was awarded a CB and four DSOs. A month after D-Day, exhausted by his continuous actions at sea against the enemy and his successful exertions to keep the U-boats out of the English Channel to ensure the safe passage of the Allied landings at D-day, he went ashore in Liverpool after a patrol. His ships and the men he had trained and inspired were already back at sea when he died on the 9 July, 1944, aged 48. His ships went on to sink another nine U-boats, bringing his flotillas' total up to twenty-nine, before the U-boat fleet finally surrendered. Fifteen of which were sunk by Walker's own ship, HMS Starling.

Captain Bennett discusses the traumatic effects of the Washington and London Naval Treaties on the fleets of the principal powers between the wars, and their astonishing growth and technical progress between 1939 and 1945. He then deals with the war in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. The Battle of the River Plate, the struggle for Narvik, the hunt for the Bismarck, the destruction of the Italian Fleet at Taranto and Matapan are all vividly described and authoritatively analysed.

Wellington and Napoleon tell the story of the convergence and final clash of two of the most brilliant commanders ever to meet on the field of battle. Wellington, his men said, did not know how to lose a battle. But Wellington himself admired his adversary