Naval Battles of the Second World War - The Atlantic and the Mediterranean

Leo Marriott is a name that is synonymous with expertly researched and crafted books on maritime subjects having produced in excess of 100 titles over the years on a whole range of subjects and warships. This book, part of a two book series published by Pen and Sword Books is another fine example to add to his body of work. This book, the first of the two, focuses on the Royal Navy’s confrontations with the German Kriegsmarine in the Battle of the Atlantic and later in the Mediterranean theatre of operations. The second title focussing on the Pacific and Far East. Both books are extremely highly illustrated with some quite rare and extremely interesting photographs, maps and diagrams. As the author indicates the Second World War was perhaps the world’s first truly global conflict. In World War One the participants came from all corners of the globe to fight on European fields but in the 1939-45 conflict virtually no part of the planet was free of some form of fighting. Maritime power played a pivotal role in the fighting of World War Two with many of the major maritime confrontations determining the outcome of the land and air campaigns that followed. This geo-political scene setting is important as it establishes why many of the stories told in this book were played out quite the way they were. The battle against the Panzerschiff Graf Spee in December 1939 and the evacuation of British troops and equipment from Narvik in Norway to the destruction of the pride of the German Navy the battleship Bismarck in May 1941 and the subsequent German Channel Dash of the battlecruisers Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen through the English Channel during Operation Cerberus and the later ill-fated convoy PQ-17. Then there is the harrowing and cautionary tales of the Battle of North Cape and the U-boat menace that lasted the entirety of the Second World War. And this is just the first part of Leo Marriott’s latest work. The second part focuses sharply on how the Royal Navy used the Mediterranean to its advantage having first secured it with epic battles pitting the might of the Royal Navy against the Vichy French and then the Regia Marina and the extremely costly battle to save Malta and North Africa from falling into Axis hands.