Featured battle : Arnhem

Part of The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars

Date : 30 November 1813

The fortified town of Arnhem was taken by storm and 2,500 of the garrison got away.

Great Naval Battles of the Pacific War

John Grehan
If ever a book needed maps, and plenty of them, this is one. The masses of well researched information is all about position and movement which the reader can only fully comprehend if they have a map to hand. Modern atlases sold in this country don’t usually have the detail of the Pacific islands which is required. I am lucky that I have the Times atlas of the Second World war but even so it meant reading at my desk rather than propped up in bed.
The big positive of this book is the quantity and quality of the information about the five major actions of the naval war in the Pacific . The content is ‘all meat and no gravy’, no opinions or personal accounts just the facts. Both Allied and Japanese sources have been used. It is interesting to note how both sides ‘slurred’ the information about what was hit and how badly for bragging rights or propaganda purposes.
I can see this book as being very useful to work from on a map table with ship models. In spite of the difficulties afore mentioned in reading in comfort this book really does reward the effort.

Frontline Books, 2022