Entries

SCUTTS, Jerry. The Fw200 Condor: A Complete History. 264p., illus., index. Manchester: Crecy, 2010. ISBN: 0859791319.

A chronological history of the Condor. From 1940-42 it operated almost unopposed as a maritime reconnaissance aircraft which sank thousands of tons of allied shipping.

• German Armed Forces

CAMPBELL, Valerie. Camp 165 Watten: Scotland’s Most Secretive Prisoner of War Camp. xv, 133p., bibliog., illus. Dunbeath: Whittles, 2008. ISBN: 9781904445609.

The camp opened in 1943 in a remote site near Wick in Scotland. It housed Category A committed Nazi supporters and this is the story of the camp and its inmates until it was closed in 1948. Some had served in the Kriegsmarine. A second edition was published in 2010, ISBN: 9781849950053.

• Prisoners of War

IREDALE, Will. The Kamikaze Hunters: Fighting for the Pacific, 1945. xiv, 386p., bibliog., illus., index. London: Macmillan, 2015. ISBN: 9780230768192.

An account of the training, deployment and missions of the young FAA pilots who fought with the British Pacific Fleet.

• Victory over Japan
• Fleet Air Arm

SPENCE, Daniel Owen. A History of the Royal Navy: Empire and Imperialism. xviii, 238p., bibliog., illus., index. London: I.B.Taurus, 2015. ISBN: 9781780765433.

An excellent potted history of some five hundred years of Empire. The section on WW2 has a good account of the little noted role of the colonial navies as well as the better known Dominion navies.

• The Dominion Forces

KAPLAN, Philip & CURRIE, Jack. U-boat Prey: Merchant Sailors at War, 1939-1942: Rare Photographs from Wartime Archives. 128p., illus. Barnsley: Pen & Sword Maritime, 2014. ISBN: 9781783462940.

Images of some of the most imposing merchant ships are used, accompanied by a strong narrative describing the various roles performed by the merchant crewmen and the wartime context in which they worked.

• Photographs
• The Merchant Navy

LYMAN, Robert. The Real X-Men: The Heroic Story of the Underwater War 1942-1945. xv, 314p., illus., index. London: Quercus, 2015. ISBN: 1784299936.

The story of the development and operational deployment of human torpedoes - 'Chariots' - and 'X-craft' midget submarines in British naval service during WWII, and of the men who crewed them.

• X-Craft and Frogmen

BROOKS, Waite. The British Pacific Fleet in World War II: An Eyewitness Account as Seen From the Bridge Deck of the Flagship, HMS King George V. 277p., illus. Bloomington, IN; Authorhouse,2013. ISBN: 9781481740357.

He joined the RCN in 1942 aged seventeen and after officer training was sent to the RN as a midshipman in 1944. He was part of the air defence team on KGV, abaft the bridge and recorded all he saw in a journal.

• Autobiography
• Victory over Japan
• Battleships

DETHICK, Janet Kinrade & CORKE, Anne M. Twixt the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: The Story of the Crew of HMS Saracen. 213, viip., bibliog., illus., index. [n.p., authors], 2016. ISBN: 9781326063207.

Briefly covers the career of Saracen until her loss in the Mediterranean in 1943. Mainly focuses on the fate of the crew and their tales of partisans, escapes, and concentration camps.

• Biography
• Prisoners of War
• Submarines

BEATTIE, John H. The Churchill Scheme: The Royal Naval Special Entry Scheme 1913-1955. x, 114, [117]p., illus., index. [n.p., author], 2010.

After completing their school education the recruits joined at the then late entry age of 17 to 19. The story is told in great detail as over the years the Special Entries were trained in over 20 different shore establishments and ships, both harbour and sea-going, before they finally went to the RN College Dartmouth in 1939 for the first time. A very detailed account.  

• Training

LAVERY, Brian. The Last Big Gun: At War and at Sea with HMS Belfast. 352p., bibliog., illus., index. Oxford: Pool of London, 2015. ISBN: 9781910860014.

An excellent account of her wartime and post-war service.

• Cruisers

HESKETH, Roger. Fortitude: The D-Day Deception Campaign. xxii, 513p., illus., index. London: St Ermin’s Press, 1999. ISBN: 0316851728.

Written in the late 1940’s as a confidential official history, it is published after being declassified and updated. Republished in the USA in 2000 by Overlook Press. ISBN: 1585670758.

• D-Day
• Intelligence

PARKER, John. SBS: The Inside Story of the Special Boat Service. viii, 311p., bibliog., illus., index. London: Headline, 1997. ISBN: 0747219761.

The wartime exploits of the various units which came together to form the modern SBS are recounted in ninety pages, from COPPs to Cockleshell Heroes.

• Special Service Units

PARRY, Joyce Ffoulkes. Joyce’s War: The Second World War Journal of a Queen Alexandra Nurse, edited by Rhiannon Evans. 256p., illus., index. Stroud: History Press, 2015. ISBN: 9780750962308.

Parry spent much of the war on the hospital ships  Otranto and Karapara as well as time on shore in hospitals in Alexandria and Calcutta. This edited diary is full of details of life ashore and afloat, worries about family and friends and social life. A fascinating volume.

• Biography
• Rescue and Medical Services
• Shipwrecks & Sinkings

BROWN, David. The Road to Oran: Anglo-French Naval Relations September 1939-July 1940 (Cass Series: Naval Policy and History, 20). xxxii, 216p., bibliog., illus., index. London: Cass, 2004. ISBN: 0714654612.

The final work of this noted naval historian is a virtually daily chronicle of the events and decisions leading to the action at Mers-el-Kebir.

• French Forces

WELHAM, M. G. & WELHAM, J. A. Frogman Spy: The Mysterious Disappearance of Commander ‘Buster’ Crabb. [x], 179p., bibliog., illus., index. London: W. H. Allen, 1990. ISBN: 1852271388.

Although principally concerned with his mysterious death, there is some coverage of his wartime career.

• Biography
• X-Craft and Frogmen

STURMA, Michael. Fremantle's Submarines : How Allied Submariners and Western Australians Helped to Win the War in the Pacific. ix, 236p., bibliog., illus., index. Annapolis, Md. : Naval Institute Press, 2015. ISBN: 9781612518602.

This book by an Australian academic lovingly captures the spirit of the Allied base and the arduous work of the flotillas based there.

• The Royal Navy
• Submarines
• Ports and Bases - Africa, Asia and Australasia

GUINN, Gilbert S. & BENNETT, G. H. British Naval Aviation in World War II: The US Navy and Anglo-American Relations {International Library of Twentieth Century History, 11). xii, 217p., bibliog., index. London: Tauris, 2007. ISBN: 9781845113711.

A good account of both the policy and practice underlying the training of British aircrew in the United States under the so-called Towers Scheme.

• Fleet Air Arm
• Training

GREHAN, John. Churchill’s Secret Invasion: Britain’s First Large-scale Combined Operations Offensive 1942. xii, 212p.,bibliog., illus., index. Barnsley: Pen & Sword Military, 2013. ISBN: 1781593825.

Operation Ironclad was the invasion of the French controlled island of Madagascar – a necessary step to protect the Cape route from the Japanese. It was a successful but chaotic affair from which many lessons were learned. A good account.

• African and Middle Eastern Adventures

HEWITT, Nick. Firing on Fortress Europe: HMS Belfast at D-Day. 176p., bibliog., illus., index. London: Imperial War Museum, 2015. ISBN: 9781904897576.

Based on first-hand accounts from the IWM archives this is the story of the landings as seen from the famous cruiser.

• Photographs
• Operation Neptune
• Cruisers

LEWIN, Terry. He Who Would Valiant Be: the Wartime Diary of Midshipman T. T. Lewin, HMS Valiant, 1940. [c 370p., illus. e-book]; London: Lewin of Greenwich Organisation Limited – Kindle edition, 2016. ISBN: 9781783018680.

An excellent example of such a journal is edited by Tim Lewin, the son of the author.  This journal describes his service as a midshipman aboard Valiant ranging from the bombardment at Mers-el Kebir to deck hockey tournaments. The events are described with some clarity.

• Autobiography
• Royal Navy Autobiographies & Biographies
• Battleships