Featured battle : Spanish Armada

Part of Anglo-Spanish War

Date : 29 August 1588 - 08 September 1588

In order to invade England Philip of Spain needed to transport his army from the Netherlands across the English Channel. He assembled an armada of ships, under the command of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, most of which were transports/supply vessels and with an escort of warships sailed up the Channel. The English fleet harried but did no serious harm until the Armada anchored at Calais. Here fire-ships were sent in and the Spaniards were scattered. English action and the wind ensured that the Armada never regained its composure. The victory owed as much to the weather as to English action but the tactics employed displayed in embryo form the future course of naval warfare.

The Destruction of 6th Army at Stalingrad

Ian Baxter
Like other books in the Images of War series this book is packed full of superb photographs. A huge amount of detail of the 6th Army’s equipment and people is shown in a set of rare, many previously unpublished, photographs. The annotations are most informative and the supporting text, only ten of the hundred and fifty five pages, gives a brief overview of the campaign. What I found particularly interesting was the different slant on the causes of the defeat. In this book the strength and organization of the Soviet army is given more weight than the Russian winter. There is a distinct absence of the usual crop of photographs of grotesquely frozen German soldiers.
Anyone, even those with only a passing interest in World War Two, would enjoy this book and for re-enactors it could prove a gold mine. We highly recommend it.

Pen & Sword Military, 2020