Cruisers - Great Britain: Books - History (2/2)

The Last Big Gun : At War & at Sea with HMS Belfast

As she lay in dry dock, devastatingly damaged by one of Hitler's newly deployed magnetic mines after barely two months in service, few could have predicted the illustrious career that lay ahead for the cruiser HMS Belfast.
After three years of repairs to her broken keel, engine- and boiler-rooms, and extensive refitting, she would go on to play a critical role in the protection of the Arctic Convoys, would fire one of the opening shots at D-Day and continue supporting the Operation Overlord landings for five weeks.

Her service continued beyond the Second World War both in Korea and in the Far East before she commenced her life as one of the world's most celebrated preserved visitor ships in the Pool of London.
Her crowning glory however came in December 1943 when, equipped with the latest radar technology, she was to play the leading role in the Battle of the North Cape sinking the feared German battlecruiser Scharnhorst, the bête noir of the Royal Navy. In doing so the ship's crew made a vital contribution to, what was to be, the final big-gun head-to-head action to be fought at sea.

In "The Last Big Gun" Brian Lavery, the foremost historian of the Royal Navy, employs his trademark wide-ranging narrative style and uses the microcosm of the ship to tell the wider story of the naval war at sea and vividly portray the realities for all of life aboard a Second World War battleship.
The book is lavishly illustrated with photographs and illustrations and will appeal to all those with an interest in military history and life in the wartime Royal Navy.

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HMS Belfast: Cruiser 1939

HMS Belfast, originally a Royal Navy light cruiser, is now permanently moored on the Thames in London. One of ten Town-class cruisers she saw service on the icy Arctic convoys during the Second World War and was also present for the bombardment of the D-Day beaches in 1944. Later, she saw service during the Korean War.

Written by experts and containing more than 200 specially commissioned photographs, this title takes the reader on a superbly illustrated tour of the ship, from bow to stern and deck by deck. Significant parts of the vessel - for example, the gun turrets and engine rooms - are given detailed coverage both in words and pictures, so that the reader has at hand the most complete visual record and explanation of the ship that exists. In addition, the importance of the ship, both in her own time and now as a museum vessel, is explained, while her design and build, and her career prior to exhibition are all described.

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HMS Gloucester - The Untold Story

On 22 May 1941, The cruiser HMS Gloucester ('The Fighting G') was sunk by aircraft of the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Crete. Of her crew of 810 men, only 83 survived to come home at the end of the War in 1945.
It is unknown how many of the men went down with the ship and how many died in the sea. Clinging to rafts and flotsam, the survivors hung on for almost 24 hours before finally being rescued by German boats searching for their own men who had been victims of a previous British naval attack.
The fact that Allied destroyers were in the proximity but were recalled from the rescue mission was a serious omission of fleet command which cost the lives of hundreds of men.

Gloucester had been dangerously low on anti-aircraft ammunition and her crew exhausted before being despatched away from the main fleet to assist the stricken destroyer HMS Greyhound. With only HMS Fiji as company, she came under attack from German bombers and, when Gloucester's ammunition was finally exhausted, she suffered several direct hits and was soon ablaze from stem to stern and left out of control.

This book explores the ship's history and operational successes from her launching in 1937 to her tragic demise. It includes vivid first-hand accounts from the surviving crew and the author's painstaking research has revealed the awful truth about one of the Royal Navy's greatest disasters during the Second World War.

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