First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Osprey Publishing,
Midland House, West Way, Botley, Oxford OX2 0PH, UK
44-02 23rd St, Suite 219, Long Island City, NY 11101, USA
E-mail: info@ospreypublishing.com
© 2011 Osprey Publishing Ltd
All rights reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrical, chemical, mechanical, optical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. Enquiries should be addressed to the Publishers.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Print ISBN: 978 1 84908 383 6
PDF e-book ISBN: 978 1 84908 384 3
ePub e-book ISBN: 978 1 78200 843 9
Editorial by Ilios Publishing Ltd, Oxford, UK (www.iliospublishing.com)
Page layout by The Black Spot
Index by Sandra Shotter
Typeset in Sabon and Myriad Pro
Maps by Bounford.com
Bird’s-eye views by Ian Palmer
Battlescene illustrations by Paul Wright
Originated by PPS Grasmere Ltd.
Printed in China through Worldprint
11 12 13 14 15 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
www.ospreypublishing.com
AUTHOR’S NOTE
In this book all ranges and distances are measured in nautical miles.
During World War II gun ranges were measured in yards in the Royal Navy, and metres in the Kriegsmarine.
Theoretically, a nautical mile varies with latitude, as it represents the equivalent of one minute of current latitude, which is shorter towards the poles than it is at the equator. For the sake of simplicity we have adopted the Royal Naval system throughout, which was – and still is – used for the calculation of gunnery ranges.
1 nautical mile = 2,000 yards (or 10 cables), or 1,852m. It is the equivalent of 1.15 land miles.
Unless otherwise indicated all images are part of the author’s collection.
ARTIST’S NOTE
Readers may care to note that the original paintings from which the colour plates in this book were prepared are available for private sale. The Publishers retain all reproduction copyright whatsoever.
All enquiries should be addressed to:
The Publishers regret that they can enter into no correspondence upon this matter.
THE WOODLAND TRUST
Osprey Publishing are supporting the Woodland Trust, the UK’s leading woodland conservation charity, by funding the dedication of trees.
© Osprey Publishing. Access to this book is not digitally restricted. In return, we ask you that you use it for personal, non-commercial purposes only. Please don’t upload this ebook to a peer-to-peer site, email it to everyone you know, or resell it. Osprey Publishing reserves all rights to its digital content and no part of these products may be copied, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise (except as permitted here), without the written permission of the publisher. Please support our continuing book publishing programme by using this e-book responsibly.
Every effort has been made by the Publisher to secure permissions to use the images in this publication. If there has been any oversight we would be happy to rectify the situation and written submission should be made to Osprey Publishing.