Featured battle : Lostwithiel

Part of The Civil Wars of the Three Kingdoms

Date : 31 August 1644

The Earl of Essex commanding the Parliamentarian's 10,000 was trapped against the sea by two Royalist forces 14,000 men under Charles 1 closed from the East while 2,400 under Richard Grenville came from the West. The parliamentary horse broke out and reached Plymouth with few casualties. The infantry remained fighting a series of skirmishes from field to field. At nightfall Essex and some men slipped away by sea. About 6,000 men were taken prisoner by the Royal army. Their were few casualties on either side.

The Japanese Navy in World War II

Evans, David C (Ed.)
The subtitle for this substantial book (568 pages) is "In the words of former Japanese Naval Officers", and from their seniority in their brief biographies (in an appendix) there is a risk that this book could become either a description of grand strategy, a justification of and blame for ultimate defeat, or both. And the contributions from these professional naval men, written in some cases not long after the events they describe do indeed carry much of that. But they also contain immediate and personal details from the glinting of the sun from the wings of bombers heading for Perl Harbour, to the difficulty of abandoning a burning carrier during Midway, to the mixed emotions of setting sail upon one of the biggest battleships ever built on a one way trip to Okinawa. All this makes it book well worth reading for both the informed and the inquisitive. I found it hard to put down and had to read a whole chapter at a sitting.
Naval Institute Press, Annapolis MD., (2nd Edn, paperback) 2017, (original) 1986