Osprey's Big Reveal: Campaign

Rounding of our sneak peek at series books coming out in 2017 is a look at our upcoming titles from one of our most popular series - Campaign. We have thirteen new books to announce, ranging from Hannibal's victory at Lake Trasimene to the battle of Luzon, one of the hardest fought campaigns in the Pacific theatre of World War II

Lake Trasimene 217 BC

Following Hannibal’s crushing victory at the battle of the Trebbia, the reeling Roman Republic sent a new army under the over-confident consul Caius Flaminius to destroy the Carthaginian invaders – unbeknownst to him they were ready and waiting. The destruction of the Roman force at Lake Trasimene firmly established Hannibal as one of the Ancient World’s greatest commanders thanks to his use of innovative tactics, including the first recorded use of a turning movement. The Romans would not send another major army to confront him until the battle of Cannae in 216 BC.

Darwin 1942

Following the devastating raids on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, lightning advances by Japanese forces throughout the Pacific and the Far East, and a desperate battle by the Allied command in the Dutch East Indies, it became evident that an attack on Australia was more a matter of ‘when’ and not ‘if’.
On 19 February, just eleven weeks after the attacks on Pearl Harbor and two weeks after the fall of Singapore, the same Japanese battle group that had attacked Hawaii was ordered to attack the ill-prepared and under-defended Australian port of Darwin.

Kursk 1943

Mauled at Stalingrad, the German army looked to regain the initiative on the Eastern Front with a huge offensive launched near the city of Kursk, 280 miles south-west of Moscow. Armed with the new Panther tank, Hitler and Field Marshal von Manstein were confident that they could inflict another crushing defeat on the Soviet Union. What they did not know is that the Soviets knew about the coming attack, and they were ready. 

Luzon 1945

Driven from the Philippines in 1942, General Douglas MacArthur returned three years later to force the Japanese off of its main island of Luzon. Containing the capital of Manila, vital natural resources as well as thousands of Allied prisoners of war, the triumph at Luzon would be a vital step on the road to victory as the Americans continued to island-hop their way towards the Japanese home islands. This new study details one of the hardest-fought campaigns of the Pacific War with Japanese fatalities alone on Luzon topping 200,000.

Fontenoy 1745

A disputed succession to the Austrian throne led to general war between the leading powers of Europe in 1740, with France, Spain and Prussia on one side, and Britain, Hapsburg Austria and the Dutch Republic on the other. While fighting occurred across the globe, the bloodiest battles were fought in Europe, with none more costly than the battle of Fontenoy in 1745.

Fearing an encirclement of France by a resurgent Hapsburg-controlled Austria, the French commander Marshall Saxe planned to overrun the Austrian Netherlands, thereby dealing a decisive blow against their enemy’s ability to wage war. Saxe’s army, the cream of the French military, invaded and set up a defensive position at Fontenoy, near Tournai – daring his enemies to knock him off his perch.

St Lô 1944

Following the D-Day landings of 6 June 1944, the US army found itself engaged in a brutal attritional struggle to break out of the Normandy beach-head. The hedgerow country of lower Normandy, called the Bocage, presented unanticipated tactical problems since it proved to be ideal for German infantry defense. This certainly proved true at the city of St Lô, the site of a crucial-cross roads and a vital objective for the Allied forces. US forces found themselves up against a determined German force that put up a staunch defence in one of the key engagements in the battle of Normandy.

Shanghai and Nanjing 1937

From 1931, China and Japan had been embroiled in a number of small-scale conflicts that had seen vast swathes of territory occupied by the Japanese. On 7 July 1937, the Japanese engineered the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, which led to the fall of Beijing and Tianjin and the start of a de facto state of war between the two countries. This force then moved south, landing an expeditionary force to take Shanghai and from there drive west to capture Nanjing.

The Bar Kokhba Revolt AD 132-135

In 132 AD, Shimeon Bar Kosiba, a rebel leader who assumed the messianic name Simon Bar Kokhba ('son of a star'), led the people of Judaea and Galilee in open rebellion, aiming to oust the occupying Romans and establish their own independent Jewish state. During the ensuing 'Bar Kokhba Revolt' (the Second Jewish War), the Jewish rebels held their own against the crack Roman troops for four years. The cost of this rebellion was catastrophic: hundreds of thousands of casualties, the destruction of Jerusalem as the Jewish capital and the expulsion of the Jewish community from the region, which only effectively ended with the founding of the State of Israel in 1948.

Savannah 1779

In 1778 Great Britain launched a second invasion of the southern colonies as part of the “southern strategy” for victory in the American Revolutionary War. A force of 3,000 British soldiers, Hessians and Loyalists was dispatched from New York City to capture Savannah, the capital of the State of Georgia. The city fell in December 1778, and became a base for British operations in the southern colonies. Desperate to regain one of the most important southern cities, Continental troops under General Benjamin Lincoln joined forces with a French naval expedition under the Admiral Charles-Henri d’Estaing in an an all-out assault on the British fortified positions protecting Savannah.

Operation Torch 1942

Following the raid of Pearl Harbor and the entry of the United States into World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt identified the European theatre as his country’s priority. Their first joint operation with the British was Operation Torch, the largest and most complex amphibious invasion at the time. Three landings took place simultaneously across the French North African coast in an ambitious attempt to trap and annihilate the Axis’ North African armies between the invading forces under General Eisenhower and British Field-Marshall Montgomery’s Eighth Army in Egypt.

Philippine Sea 1944

The battle of the Philippine Sea took place during the United States' amphibious invasion of the Mariana Islands during the Pacific War, and involved the US Fifth Fleet and the Japanese Mobile Fleet in one of the epic naval engagements of the war.
The two fleets clashed on 19/20 June 1944 and the Japanese carrier fighters were shot down in devastating numbers by US aircraft in what became known as the 'Great Marianas Turkey Shoot', before US counterattacks and submarine strikes forced the withdrawal of the Japanese fleet.

Nashville 1864

Falling between the exciting events of Sheridan’s Shenandoah campaign and the conclusion of Sherman’s March to the Sea, General John Hood’s invasion of Tennessee has been largely forgotten. Yet for eleven weeks the fate of the Civil War was held in the balance of this campaign, teetering on a knife’s edge as Hood’s force threatened Union supply lines. Victory could very well have turned the tides of the war to favouring the Confederacy again, whilst defeat would be another heavy blow to the already faltering Confederate war effort.

The Hindenburg Line 1918

From 26 September until 6 October 1918, the Allied Armies in France launched their biggest ever combined offensive on the Western Front. Two million troops of the British, French, American and Belgian Armies launched four attacks in rapid succession across a 250km front between the Argonne and Flanders.

At the centre of these events was the British First, Third and Fourth Armies’ attack on the formidable ‘Hindenburg Line’ defences between Cambrai and St Quentin. Assisted by the French First Army, the British, Australian, Canadian and American troops breached three defence lines consisting of deep trenches, dense wire entanglements, concrete bunkers and extensive tunnel systems arranged in a zone four miles deep. This victory stood in stark contrast to the inconclusive assaults of 1916–17 and demonstrated for the first time that the Allies had achieved strategic, operational and tactical dominance over their German foe.

That brings our Osprey series reveals to a close, but there are more books to announce for 2017. Watch this space!