Carrier Combat

Ref: 4603

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{detailed description}It was during the Second World War that the aircraft carrier came into its own, effectively displacing the battleship as the capital ship of the world's major navies.
The first sign of the true potential of the aircraft carrier as a weapon of war came in November 1940 when just twenty-one elderly Fairey Swordfish biplanes from HMS Illustrious carried out a spectacularly successful raid on the Italian fleet at Taranto. The lesson was not lost on the Japanese who used carrier air-power in their devastating raid one year later on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, bringing the United States into the war.
Aircraft carriers were used in many of the crucial naval engagements of the Second World War, ranging from the Royal Navy's hunt for the Bismarck and the protection of Convoy PQ18 in the Arctic, to the US Navy's victories against the Japanese in the Coral Sea and at Midway in the Pacific theatre. It was superior American sea power that finally drove the Japanese into bloody retreat and towards ultimate defeat.
In the years that followed the Second World War, aircraft carriers played a vital role as capital ships in the projection of power across the globe. This was particularly so in the opening conflicts of the Cold War period when carrier air power was used to effect in Korea and at Suez during the 1950s. The US made extensive use of carrier-based aircraft during the Vietnam war as did Britain in the later Falklands conflict. In 1991, US Navy carriers were instrumental in the successful prosecution of Operation Desert Storm.

Combining the author's own narrative with vivid first-hand accounts by those who served aboard the ships, or with the carrier-borne naval and marine air squadrons, Carrier Combat is the dramatic story of the aircraft carrier at war. Fully illustrated with archive photographs in colour and black and white, it will appeal to all with an interest in naval air power.
{Author / Publisher / Date}by David Wragg
published by Sutton Publishing 1997 1st edn. profusely illustrated, index. 20x27
{condition}slightly bumped corners, otherwise near fine, inc. d/j.
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