Showing titles in Weapons & Warfare

Many weapons and inventions were credited with winning World War II, most famously in the assertion that the atomic bomb "ended the war, but radar won the war." What is less well known is that both airborne radar and the atomic bomb were invented in British laboratories, but built by Americans. The same holds true for many other American weapons credited with the Allied victory: the P-51 Mustang fighter, the Liberty ship, the proximity fuze, the Sherman tank, and even penicillin all began with British scientists and planners.

Nuclear terrorism is such a disturbing prospect that we shy away from its details. Yet, as a consequence, we fail to understand how best to defeat it. Michael Levi takes us inside nuclear terrorism and behind the decisions a terrorist leader would be faced with in pursuing a nuclear plot. Along the way, Levi identifies the many obstacles, large and small, that such a terrorist scheme might encounter, allowing him to discover a host of ways that any plan might be foiled.

Gunsmiths in early 19th-century America were helped along by noted artisans from Germany, Switzerland, and other European powers, but despite advances made in the European and American musket, the requirement of an exterior spark and percussion to ignite powder for a single-shot discharge remained the paradigm. Similarly, the era was unable to move past the cumbersome weapon that required at least half a minute to reload. The military compensation for such an ungainly and vulnerable process was the alternation of troop lines, in which one fired while the other reloaded from behind.

«Un juramento forjado en fuego selló su destino… y el de su reino» La muerte del emperador Alfonso de León en 1157 deja sumidos a los reinos de Hispania en la división y la sospecha. Los reyes cristianos reavivan entonces antiguas rivalidades y conflictos, indiferentes a las oscuras sombras que avanzan sobre ellos desde África. Muhammad ibn Mardanis, emir del Sharq al-Ándalus, ignorado y despreciado por sus antiguos aliados cristianos, debe valerse por sí mismo para preservar su independencia frente a un enemigo que no solo persigue conquistar sus tierras, sino también borrar su ...

Why did the US intelligence services fail so spectacularly to know about the Soviet Union's nuclear capabilities following World War II? As Vince Houghton, historian and curator of the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC, shows us, that disastrous failure came just a few years after the Manhattan Project's intelligence team had penetrated the Third Reich and knew every detail of the Nazi's plan for an atomic bomb. What changed and what went wrong?

Gavin reassesses the strategy of flexible response, the influence of nuclear weapons during the Berlin Crisis, the origins of and motivations for US nuclear nonproliferation policy, and how to assess the nuclear dangers we face today. Archival evidence makes it clear that decision makers were more concerned about underlying geopolitical questions than about the strategic dynamic between two nuclear superpowers.

Since their introduction, aircraft have become a key aspect of any conflict between nations. Aircraft are used to provide reconnaissance, transportation, airborne radar, electronic jamming, air-to-air combat and of course ground attack. Ground attack is performed by a range of aircraft types encompassing strategic (bombers), tactical bombers (fighter-bombers) and helicopters. Ground attack weapons launched from these aircraft include guided and unguided bombs, rockets, guided missiles, ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and cannon fire. Ground targets include enemy AFV’s, artillery ...

Gunpowder: The History and Legacy of the Explosive that Modernized Warfare examines the origins of the chemical explosive, and its long, winding history across the world. You will learn about gunpowder like never before.

If you’ve ever encountered night vision technology through military service or a friend's gear, or even considered it in the context of prepping for uncertain times, this book is for you. Night vision isn't just a luxury—it's a game-changer, especially when it comes to protecting yourself from threats under the cover of darkness. This books covers analog night vision (the green kind, not thermal/heat) in exhaustive detail. It’s more than just a buyer’s guide, but a full look into the technology and evolution of generations. Stop digging through esoteric posts scattered on the ...

Few raids of the Second World War have captured the public imagination like Operation Chastise. Here is the full story—not the familiar headlines, but the unexpected details that reveal how ingenuity, improvisation, and human courage combined to pull off one of history’s most audacious bombing missions.

Part One Winston Churchill's superlative account of the prelude to and events of the First World War is a defining work of 20th-century history. With dramatic narrative power Churchill reconstructs the action on the Western and Eastern Fronts, the wars at sea and in the air and the advent of tanks and U-boats.

Redeye Fulda Cold by Bill Fortin is a first in series of a "MASH-like" war stories. Set in 1969 West Germany; the deployment of the newly developed Redeye ground to air missile system is brought to bear inside the 3rd Armored Division’s 1st/48th Infantry Battalion. This very inspiring tale inside a very Cold War takes the men of the 3rd Armored Division though a series of history making operations. Carefully crafted CIA planning provides the pause necessary and ultimately prevents a nuclear showdown with Russia. The infamous Fulda Gap becomes the center stage of the action.

El verano de 1945, William Shawn, director ejecutivo de The New Yorker, habló con el reportero John Hersey sobre la idea de publicar un relato que ilustrara la dimensión humana de los efectos de la bomba atómica en Hiroshima, pues le causaba estupor comprobar que, pese a la gran cantidad de información sobre la bomba que recibían, se estaba ignorando lo que realmente había ocurrido en Hiroshima. El reportero aceptó el encargo.

Sadako Teiko Okuda was living in Osaki-shimo, an island off the mainland of Japan, when the bomb hit Hiroshima on the 6th of August 1945. Even sixty kilometers from the city, it was clear something horrific had happened. There was a blinding flash and the window next to Sadako smashed, a shard of glass leaving a painful burn on her neck. Soon, news came that her niece and nephew who lived in Hiroshima were missing. There was only one thing she could do—leave the relative safety of the island and set off into the city to find them.

How did America choose the targets for the atomic bomb? What made Hiroshima preferable over Kyoto or Tokyo? Critical to the mission to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a series of meetings set up in mid-1945 and comprising America’s most powerful military, political and scientific chiefs. The committeemen would decide where and how the first nuclear weapons would be used in anger.

Brought to you by Penguin. A remarkable account of the terrible climax of the Second World War in Asia, published to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. In the closing months of the Second World War hundreds of thousands of Japanese, mostly civilians, died in a final...

The Army's need: An automatic pistol with the stopping power of the .45 caliber Colt single action Army revolver. Colt and John Browning collaborated to meet the Army's need. The result was the greatest combat pistol ever designed. This book examines why the Army insisted on .45 caliber, the innovation required to meet that requirement, and how the model of 1911 beat the competition in reliability, function, and feel.

The development of nuclear weapons by humans with 'Trinity' and their gradual evolution within a decade into megaton-class thermonuclear weapons; capable of decimating entire cities in a matter of minutes with a single explosion; has almost taken mankind onto the verge of a potential nuclear apocalypse & doomsday on multiple occasions so far over the course of the Atomic Age, especially through the bone chilling Cold War years. However, almost all global nuclear powers consistently maintain and still swear by the extremely dangerous & absurd doctrines of ‘nuclear deterrence’, ‘mutual-...

El Mando Orientado a Misión es una filosofía de la organización que, una vez implantada, y por mor de la costumbre, termina deviniendo en su cultura. Tiene su origen en el Auftragstaktik prusiano, que fue la solución adoptada por el margraviato tras las debacles de Jena y Auerstädt durante las guerras napoleónicas; y ha sido la clave de los éxitos de los ejércitos alemanes desde entonces. Israelíes, británicos y americanos han tratado de adaptar el concepto a sus propias necesidades, dando origen a lo que se conoce como Mission Command. Por esa vía se incorporó a la doctrina de ...

On July 16, 1945, at 05:25 AM, just half-an-hour prior to sunrise, the Second Sun rose in New Mexico’s night sky with the Trinity test which brilliantly lit up the dark sky with light so bright that it forced even a blind girl to literally sit-up from sleep and notice the resulting flash even 100 miles away from the Alamogordo test site. The first nuclear age, thus, witnessed the detonation & testing of nuclear weapons on land, below surface, under water as well as in space; as humanity was still coming to grips with the immense power of the atom which is almost 100 million times more ...