NavyBooks celebrates website re-launch with charitable pledge
Our new-look NavyBooks.com website, which hosts hundreds of naval titles and thousands of books, ranging from amateur-penned memoirs to established thought-leaders in naval history, warships and maritime warfare, is to donate 1% of all revenue to The Royal Navy and Royal Marines Charity (RNRMC) as its 2016 Charity of the Year.
New NavyBooks owner and Managing Director, Ian Whitehouse, is a former submariner who served with the Second Submarine Squadron in Plymouth and now lives in North Cornwall.
He says that the RNRMC was an obvious candidate to support because of his personal links to the Royal Navy. NavyBooks’ main customers typically also have close links to, and support for, the Royal Navy. “With the launch of the new website, and understanding our customers’ passion for the subject, we thought it was a good time to partner with The Royal Navy and Royal
This article is based on one previously published by Commander Rob Forsyth, Royal Navy in the February 2016 issue of The Naval Review. Commander Forsyth argues that, far from being 'independent and keeping us safe' as claimed, the cost of Trident and its replacement is making UK less safe by crippling our military capability.
TRIDENT - IS IT KEEPING US SAFE?
The 2015 election failed to stimulate any debate on defence at all, never mind the nuclear deterrent (stand fast the SNP); the general public is blindly and trustingly accepting the Government's policy without access to the full facts. As Executive Officer of a Polaris submarine in the 1970's I concurred with the then government policy of Mutually Assured Destruction - because I was confident that it would only ever be fired as a second-strike retaliation should the USSR fire at us first. The balance of opinion amongst 'The Trade' – although not held
OPERATION SNOWDROP
We read and hear about warmer winters. Brian Hawkins, a retired BBC producer, looks back over 60 years to a winter which started out as one of the coldest, and to his involvement in "Operation Snowdrop" whilst he was serving in the Royal Navy on his National Service engagement.
In early January 1955 I was returning from Christmas leave to my ship, HMS GLORY, a light fleet carrier, which had distinguished herself in the then recent Korean campaign. Berthed in the Royal Naval Dockyard Portsmouth, in the shadow of Nelson's flagship Victory, GLORY was preparing to join the reserve fleet.
However adverse weather conditions dictated a change of plan, Glory was to be deployed on a humanitarian mission and join "Operation Snowdrop". The weather conditions in Scotland had been severe. The country north of the Caledonian canal was virtually cut off from the rest of Scotland. Relief operations by the Royal A
72 days after the Argentinian forces invaded the Falkland Isles a ceasefire was declared on 14 June; the commander of the Argentine garrison in Stanley, Brigade General Mario Menéndez, surrendered to Major General Jeremy Moore the same day.
In the face of seemingly impossible distance and against a background of impending cuts to the Armed Forces, particularly the Royal Navy Britain put together and despatched a military Task Force, that sailed with 4 days of the invasion, to regain the dependency from the Argentine invaders.
225 British personnel, 649 Argentine personnel and 3 civilians died in the conflict, nearly 2,400 were wounded. 16 ships were lost, over 80 fixed wing aircraft and nearly 50 helicopters were downed.
It is said that senior officers are always ready to fight the last war and unprepared for the next. Could Britain today despatch and sustain a similar standalone Task Force - should it retain this capability in times of austerity -
In 1588, the ships of the English Navy set sail to attack the Spanish Armada through the mouth of the River Plym, thereby establishing the naval presence in Plymouth.
In 1689 Prince William of Orange became William III and almost immediately required the building of a new dockyard west of Portsmouth. Edmund Dummer, Surveyor of the Royal Navy, travelled to Devon searching for an area where a dockyard could be built; he sent in two estimates for sites, one in Plymouth, Cattewater and one further along the coast, on the Hamoaze, a section of the River Tamar. Having dismissed the Plymouth site as inadequate, he settled on the Hamoaze area which soon became known as Plymouth Dock, later renamed Devonport. On 30 December 1690, a contract was let for a dockyard to be built: the start of Plymouth (later Devonport) Royal Dockyard. Dummer was given responsibility for designing and building the new yard.
At the heart of his new dockyard, Dummer placed a stone-lined basin, giving access
