Fleet

A superbly illustrated new account of how Germany's High Seas Fleet was built, operated and fought, as it challenged the world's most powerful navy in World War I.

On June 21, 1919 occurred the greatest single loss of shipping since Man first sat astride a log and floated away from land. The Persian Fleet met its end at Salamis and the U.S. Pacific Fleet was smashed at Pearl Harbor, but both of these disasters resulted from enemy action. The Spanish Armada was scattered and destroyed, but the main reason for its doom was a big storm. The German High Seas Fleet survived a cataclysmic war almost unscathed, but the bulk of its strength and tonnage was destroyed by order of the German admiral in command at the time. The scale of loss, over 400,000 tons of the finest warships then in existence, 74 vessels of which 52 actually went to the bottom under the eyes of the enemy, is unique in itself. That it was an act of self-destruction based on a misapprehension compounds the uniqueness of the event.

A superbly illustrated new account of how Germany's High Seas Fleet was built, operated and fought, as it challenged the world's most powerful navy in World War I.

In this riveting critique of the Fleet Air Arm's policy across two world wars, former FAA Fighter Pilot Henry Adlam charts the course of its history from 1912 to 1945, logging the various milestones, mistakes and successes that characterized the service history of the Fleet Air Arm.