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Relying on newly declassified files and testimony from eyewitnesses and participants’ families, Damien Lewis recounts the radar war and the birth of British special operations, created by Churchill for specialised missions. After Operation Colossus, an unsuccessful attack on an Italian aqueduct, the book focuses on the more successful Operation Biting, an SOE mission to steal a radar dish from the French coast, along with the crucial technology powering it.

The midget submarines that were famously used to attack the battleship Tirpitz in 1943 were developed further and the improved 'XE-class' craft were used in a daring attack on Singapore harbour in 1945. This history recounts how 18 British, Australian and New Zealand submariners, two of whom were awarded the Victoria Cross and several others decorated, piloted two XE craft through the Japanese defences to successfully incapacitate the heavy cruiser Takao.

Slightly off-mint

This history and analysis of snipers’ equipment and tactics takes an overview of the role and psychology of marksmen from the medieval period onwards, and details the improvements in observation, accuracy and ranging that transformed sniping over the last century. Individual stories include the Finn who amassed 505 kills in less than 100 days of the 1939–40 Winter War, resulting in the USSR training over 2000 snipers.

In 1943 Bob Laycock succeeded Louis Mountbatten as Chief of Combined Operations, becoming the youngest major general in the British Army. This biography examines a military career that began with the Royal Horse Guards in 1927, ended with a period as Governor of Malta in the 1950s but is chiefly notable for involvement in the Battle of Crete, the Rommel Raid and in particular for a part in establishing the Commando special forces units.

During the closing weeks of the Second World War, Allied High Command feared the Soviet Union’s domination of post-war Europe, and ordered the capture of superior Nazi military technology, and the scientists who developed it, before they fell into Soviet hands. This fast-paced story of Target-Force, an assembly of British regiments entrusted with the task, covers the brigade’s formation (inspired by Ian Fleming) and its missions, including the capture of the U-boat facility at Kiel.

Operation Frankton, in December 1942, was probably the most audacious raid of the Second World War. The twelve British commandos who infiltrated Bordeaux’s dockyards in canoes, or ‘cockles’, knew they were facing near certain death; but as Churchill acknowledged, their success in sabotaging German equipment helped shorten the war. This history explores the background and planning of the mission, as well as the miscommunication and Admiralty politicking that hampered it.

Facing the well-equipped German forces in North Africa in 1941, David Stirling saw the potential for small teams of highly trained soldiers to mount surprise attacks and acts of sabotage on airfields and supply chains. This account of his founding of the SAS describes their actions in Africa, Sicily, Italy and France and puts into context their vital strategic effectiveness during the Second World War and lasting influence on military tactics thereafter. Off-mint and felt-tip mark on lower trimmed edge.

By the summer of 1940 nearly a million and a half British men had joined the Local Defence Volunteers (LDV), a response to the very real threat of invasion by a rapidly advancing German Army. This book explores the LDV’s transformation from an enthusiastic yet ill-equipped organization into the capable Home Guard, which, as the threat of invasion receded, nevertheless became key to the UK’s local defence strategy, as well as a means of combating the purported Fifth Column. Off-mint.

During the North African campaign in 1942, the British used a special force of German-speaking Jews recruited from displaced Germans in Palestine. This ‘Special Interrogation Group’ were given German military police uniforms and equipment and tasked with gathering crucial information from behind enemy lines. This book outlines the formation of the unit and describes its part in the raid on Tobruk in September 1942, which involved trekking across hundreds of miles of desert disguised as German soldiers transporting PoWs.

Of the many special forces set up after 1940 to 'set Europe ablaze', in Churchill's phrase, some have since become household names, such as the Parachute Regiment and the SAS, while others, having had brief and covert existences, are little known today. This well-illustrated reference guide, aimed at the militaria collector, sets in context the growth and development of Allied Special Forces during the Second World War and details the distinctive insignia that they wore.

The stalemate of trench warfare in the First World War precipitated a gradual move towards more dynamic attacks by smaller units. These tactics became especially associated with the German 'stoss' or shock troops, the term later giving way to the more colourful 'stormtroopers'. This analysis of tactical developments in the German Army demonstrates how the elite units emerged and built their reputation, setting the groundwork for the fearsome agents of blitzkrieg in the 1930s.

British intelligence had limited resources in fascist Italy, but still played a crucial role in the conflict there, not least when agent Dick Mallaby was plucked from imprisonment to undertake clandestine communications about the Italian surrender. Commissioned by the Cabinet Office and drawing on many previously classified documents, this is the official history of the Special Operations Executive in Italy, revealing missions as daring as a plot to assassinate Mussolini and plans to arm the Mafia.

The midget submarines that were famously used to attack the battleship Tirpitz in 1943 were developed further and the improved 'XE-class' craft were used in a daring attack on Singapore harbour in 1945. This history recounts how 18 British, Australian and New Zealand submariners, two of whom were awarded the Victoria Cross and several others decorated, piloted two XE craft through the Japanese defences to successfully incapacitate the heavy cruiser Takao.