Osprey's Big Reveal: General Military (2)/ Anatomy of a Ship

To navigate your way through the Big Reveal please use the links in the bar above.

Today we have the second of our General Military and Anatomy of a Ship reveal to share with you. This includes a fantastic list of 10 General Military titles and an Anatomy of a Ship title that will be arriving in 2022. Get adding to your wishlists, because these are not to be missed!

GNM: Smashing Hitler's Guns

The Ranger attack on the German gun batteries at Pointe-du-Hoc in the early morning hours of D-Day is the stuff of legend. The gun batteries were strategically positioned between the two American D-Day landing beaches and were considered the main threat to the Operation Neptune landings. Despite confusion and chaos, the Rangers succeeded in scaling the 100-foot cliffs, but the guns were nowhere to be found. Spreading out in all directions, a Ranger team managed to find and spike the guns at their hidden location south of Pointe-du-Hoc. For two days, this small force fought off repeated German attacks, until an American relief force finally arrived on 8 June, by which time more than half the Rangers were casualties.  

 This new book on this famous raid takes a fresh and comprehensive look at the famous attack on Pointe-du-Hoc, examining the creation of the German gun battery, the initial Allied intelligence assessments of the threat, and the early plans to assault the site. The forgotten Allied bombing attacks on Pointe-du-Hoc are detailed, as well as the subsequent Allied intelligence investigations of the results. While most accounts of Pointe-du-Hoc are based on the published US Army history, the author has tracked down the long-forgotten original, unedited report in the archives that contains a number of curious changes from the better-known and widely accepted version. Little-known interviews of the Rangers who took part in the mission also shed fresh light and a significant number of German records provide the enemy perspective of the battle for control of the guns.

GNM: The Cactus Air Force

The battle of Guadalcanal was the first offensive operation undertaken by the US and her allies in the Pacific War, and a testing ground of which side would prevail. ‘Cactus,’ the code name for the island, became a sinkhole for enemy air and naval power, experienced forces whose losses could never be made good. The three months of air battles between August 20, 1942, when the first Marine air unit arrived on the island, and 15 November, when the last enemy attempt to retake the island was defeated, were perhaps the most important of the Pacific War. After November 15, 1942, the US never looked back as its forces moved across the Pacific to the war’s inevitable conclusion.

Over 40 years, Eric Hammel interviewed more than 150 American participants in the air campaign at Guadalcanal, none of whom are still alive. Significantly, these involved the junior officers and enlisted men whose stories and memories were not part of the official history. The interviews are the most comprehensive first-person accounts of the battle assembled by any historian and form The Cactus Air Force.

GNM: The U-Boat War

The accepted historical narrative of the Second World War predominantly assigns U-boats to the so-called ‘Battle of the Atlantic’, almost as if the struggle over convoys between the new world and the old can be viewed in isolation from simultaneous events on land and in the air. This has become an almost accepted error. The story of Germany’s second U-boat war began on the first day of hostilities with Britain and France and ended with the final torpedo sinking on 7 May 1945. U-boats were active in nearly every theatre of operation in which the Wehrmacht served, and within all but the Southern Ocean. These deployments were frequently interconnected in what became an increasingly inefficient German naval strategy.

 This fascinating new book places each theatre of action in which U-boats were deployed into the broader context of the Second World War in its entirety while also studying the interdependence of the various geographic deployments. It illustrates the U-boats’ often direct relationship with land, sea and aerial campaigns of both the Allied and Axis powers, dispels certain accepted mythologies, and reveals how the ultimate failure of the U-boats stemmed as much from chaotic German military and industrial mismanagement as it did from Allied advances in code-breaking and weaponry.

GNM: The Victor of Gettysburg

The Civil War is the most popular epoch in American history and historians have produced a voluminous amount of literature on the nation’s bloodiest conflict. Yet, for the scores of monographs exploring the war’s battles and campaigns, as well as its soldiers and generals, critical gaps remain.

The Victor of Gettysburg is a command and operational narrative of the prominent General George Gordon Meade, commander of the Union Army of the Potomac at the battle of Gettysburg in 1863. Dr Jennifer M. Murray examines the entirety of Meade’s military career, exploring his role as a brigade, division, and corps commander. She analyses Meade’s leadership during the pursuit of General Lee’s Confederate army from Gettysburg, as well as his command relationship with General Grant, challenging conventional interpretations and revealing new insights to provide the first comprehensive exploration of Meade in over 50 years.

GNM To Save An Army

Stalingrad ranks as one of the most infamous, savage and emotive battles of the 20th century. It has consumed military historians since the 1950s and has inspired many books and much debate. This book will tell the story of the desperate operation mounted by the Luftwaffe to supply, by airlift, the trapped and exhausted German Sixth Army at Stalingrad in the winter of 1942-43. The weather conditions faced by the flying crews, mechanics and soldiers on the ground were appalling, but against all odds, and a resurgent and active Soviet air force, the transports maintained a determined presence over the ravaged city on the Volga, even when the last airfields in the pocket had been lost. Even the daily figure of 300 tons of supplies, needed by Sixth Army just to subsist, proved over-ambitious for the Luftwaffe, which battled against a lack of transport capacity, worsening serviceability, and increasing losses in badly needed aircraft.

GNM: When the Shooting Stopped - August 1945 

In the 44 months between December 1941 and August 1945, the Pacific Theater absorbed the attention of the American nation and military longer than any other. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, the U.S. especially was committed to confronting Tokyo as a matter of urgent priority.

 But from Oaho to Tokyo was a long, sanguinary slog, with U.S. battle deaths there making up over a third of the U.S. wartime total. However, by the summer of 1945 there was hope on both the American homefront and on the frontline. The stunning announcements of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9 seemed sure to force Tokyo over the tipping point. But  few understood was the vast gap in the cultural ethos of East and West at that time. Most of the Japanese cabinet refused to surrender and vicious dogfights were still waged in the skies above Japan.                

This fascinating new history tells the dramatic story of the final weeks of the war, detailing the last brutal battles on air, land and sea with evocative first-hand accounts. Barrett Tillman then expertly details the first weeks of a tenuous peace and the drawing of battle lines with the forthcoming Cold War as Soviet forces concluded their invasion of Manchuria. When the Shooting Stopped retells these dramatic events drawing on accounts from all sides to relive the days when the war finally ended and the world was forever changed.

GNM: Hitler's Navy

Hamstrung at first by the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, during the 1930s, the German Navy underwent a programme of rearmament in defiance of the restrictions, building modern warships under limitations which forced technological innovation. Submarines were strictly prohibited by the treaty, and yet, following years of covert development, they became one of the Kriegsmarine’s most deadly weapons.

Blooded in the Spanish Civil War, the surface ships of the Kriegsmarine went on to play a crucial role in the opening salvoes of World War II during the invasions of Poland and Norway, although serious losses here set back plans for the invasion of Britain, and by the end of the war, only a handful of surface vessels remained to be divided up among the Allies. From the beginning of the war, but especially after the fall of France, the dreaded and extraordinarily successful U-boats stalked the Atlantic, threatening vital British shipping convoys and choking off the lifeline of munitions and supply from the US. Once Italy and Japan entered the war, German naval operations expanded to the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean.

This highly illustrated volume is a comprehensive study of the German Navy throughout the war, from pocket battleships to torpedo boats.

GNM: Panzer III

The Panzer III was the mainstay of the German armoured forces in the early years of World War II and spearheaded the victories in Poland, Western Europe and the Balkans. Designed and developed in the mid-1930s, it was originally equipped with a 3.7cm gun and with 30mm-thick armour. Early combat in Poland and France saw the need for this to be upgraded, and later models were armed with a 5cm KwK L/42 gun and had the frontal armour reinforced to 60mm by adding extra plating. This later version proved to be particularly effective during the campaigns in the Balkans and against British armour in the North African desert campaign. However, in the first months of Operation Barbarossa it became obvious to battlefield commanders that the Panzer III had become obsolete as a main battle tank and it began to be replaced by the Panzer IV as the main front-line battle tank. The Panzer III was relegated to a secondary role, but its chassis proved the basis for the Sturmgeschutz III.

This highly illustrated title details the history of the Panzer III throughout World War II, from its early development in the pre-war years, through its pivotal role in the Blitzkrieg campaigns in Poland and Western Europe, to its eventual obsolescence on the Eastern Front.

GNM: Z Special Unit

Z Special Unit, one of the most intrepid but arguably the most unsung of Allied Special Forces of the Second World War waged a guerrilla war against Japan for two years in the south-west Pacific. On some of their 81 operations Z Special Unit slipped into enemy harbours in canoes and silently mined ships before vanishing into the night; on others they parachuted into the dense Borneo jungle to fight with headhunters against the Japanese and on one occasion they landed on an Indonesian island and smuggled out the pro-Allied sultan from under Japanese noses.

The Japanese weren't the only adversary that Z Special Unit encountered in the brutal terrain of the Pacific. In the mango swamps of Borneo and the dense jungle of Papua New Guinea they were faced with venomous snakes, man-eating crocodiles and deadly diseases. But it was the enemy soldiers who proved the most ruthless foe, beheading those Z Special Unit commandos who fell into their hands.

Drawing on veteran interviews as well as operational reports and recently declassified SOE files, Gavin Mortimer explores the incredible history of this remarkable special forces unit and the remarkable band of commandoes that defied the odds.

GNM: Warship 2022 

For over 40 years, Warship has been the leading annual resource on the design, development, and deployment of the world's combat ships. Featuring a broad range of articles from a select panel of distinguished international contributors, this latest volume combines original research, new book reviews, warship notes, an image gallery, and much more, maintaining the impressive standards of scholarship and research for which Warship has become synonymous. Detailed and accurate information is the keynote of all the articles, which are fully supported by plans, data tables, and stunning photographs.

ANT: The Aircraft Carrier Hiryu 

Hiryu was an aircraft carrier built for the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) during the 1930s. Her aircraft supported the Japanese invasion of French Indochina in mid-1940 and during the first month of the Pacific War, she took part in the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Battle of Wake Island. She supported the conquest of the Dutch East Indies in January 1942 and her aircraft bombed Darwin, Australia, and continued to assist in the Dutch East Indies campaign. In April, Hiryu's aircraft helped sink two British heavy cruisers and several merchant ships during the Indian Ocean raid. Hiryu and three other fleet carriers of the First Air Fleet participated in the Battle of Midway in June 1942. After bombarding American forces on the atoll, the carriers were attacked by aircraft and carriers. Dive bombers crippled Hiryu. She was scuttled the following day after it became clear that she could not be salvaged. The loss of Hiryu and three other IJN carriers at Midway was a crucial strategic defeat for Japan and contributed significantly to the Allies' ultimate victory in the Pacific.

Drawing on new research and technology, this edition is the most comprehensive examination of Hiryu ever published. It includes a complete set of detailed line drawings with fully descriptive keys and full-color 3D artwork, supported by technical details, photographs, and text on the building of the ship and a record of the ship’s service history.